Marking the end of the first year of the AQUARIUS project, partners gathered in Helsinki, Finland, from the 10-12 February 2025 for the first in-person General Assembly meeting.
The meeting opened with a very warm welcome from our local host, the Finnish Environment Institute SYKE, with Jukka Seppala providing partners with some “cool” and “warm” facts about Finland and inviting partners to a tour of SYKE’s RV Aranda later that evening.
Formally starting the meeting, AQUARIUS Coordinator Aodhán Fitzgerald (Marine Institute), thanked our hosts and welcomed all partners before highlighting the significant progress achieved in the first year of the project, including the development of the online integrated research infrastructure catalogue; a dedicated Transnational Access (TA) Portal; an assessment of data gaps and scientific challenges related to the Lighthouse regions; a communication and dissemination plan and the outreach and engagement activities by all partners, including dedicated sea-basin brokerage events. All of these efforts, he noted, contributed to the success of the first TA Call (November 2024).
Further reflecting on the applications to the first Call, the project coordinator thanked the scientific community for their excellent response and welcomed the diversity of research infrastructures requested in the applications as well as the geographic coverage, with prospective projects spanning all the Mission Lighthouse areas.
With the closure of the first call, further opportunities have opened with the launch of the training opportunities for early career scientists, including marine internships and the PLOCAN glider summer school, as well as the initial work to evaluate the applications to the first Call.
The opening session was followed by a series of task updates from all the work package leaders (Marine Institute, AWI, OGS, MARIS and SSBE), before moving to dedicated in-depth sessions on key areas. These included the research infrastructure portfolio, transnational access call design and management, data management and open science, technical training, and impact. These discussions allowed all partners to review and give feedback on the milestones achieved, identify any potential issues, and plan the next step for AQUARIUS. The discussion centred on the preliminary results of the first TA Call, as well as the plans for the launch of the second TA Call in September 2025. This upcoming call is designed to be shaped by the outcomes of the first.
Looking ahead, year two of AQUARIUS will continue at the same pace, with the evaluation and selection of the first tranche of successful TA projects expected to be announced by May 2025. Meantime work is ongoing to establish an operational AQUARIUS dataflow dashboard to ensure FAIR access to new data, data products and scientific knowledge from the TA projects. New training opportunities will be launched soon, including for floating universities on board the GAIA Blu and the RV SVEA and internships with the INFOMAR Seabed Mapping Programme, onboard the Irish RV Tom Crean.
The first version of the AQUARIUS policy brief outlining a vision for excellence in marine and freshwater research infrastructures will be developed and communication, dissemination and outreach activities, to promote AQUARIUS and maximise its impact will continue, including in the coming months with a booth at EGU, and representation at EU Ocean Days and European Maritime Day, amongst others.
As promised, host partner SYKE arranged an excellent tour of the RV Aranda, with fascinating talks and demonstrations of activities and equipment provided by the crew and scientists.
The meeting ended with the coordinator noting how useful the discussions had been and how important it was for partners to meet
physically. Extending a warm thanks to SYKE colleagues, the MI coordination team and all partners, the meeting ended with an informal networking session.
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