Hydrographic Institute present at the Final General Assembly of the project JERICO-NEXT

Between 2 and 5 July, the Final General Assembly of the JERICO-NEXT project took place in France, Brest (http://www.jerico-ri. me/).

The Hydrographic Institute is one of 34 partners from 15 different countries and was represented at this meeting by oceanographers João Vitorino and Inês Martins of the Oceanography Division, with two communications entitled “From local support to a worldwide dissemination: the Nazare Canyon Observatory MONICAN” by the authors João Vitorino, Inês Martins, Nuno Zechariah, Sara Almeida and Célia Pata (oral presentation and poster) and “Improving our understanding of coastal ocean areas impacted by long submarine canyons”, by João Vitorino (poster presentation).

The JERICO-NEXT project, starting in September 2015 and ending in August this year, aims to strengthen and expand a European coastal ocean monitoring network that is solid and transparent in providing operational services as well as providing high-quality environmental data and information related to European coastal seas.

This project also aims to support European coastal research communities, allow free and open access to data, improve the readiness of new observation platforms, increase sensor performance, show the adequacy of developed technologies and observation strategies, propose a long-term roadmap for coastal observatories through a permanent dialogue with stakeholders.

The physical, chemical and biological coastal data obtained under the project will be made available through a single European channel with strong interactions with EMODnet (http://www.emodnet. me/).