Raising awareness about the benefits of Nature Based Solutions and the bioremediation potential of oysters is one of the main goals of RemediOS project.
At the beginning of April, RemediOS organised a 3-day series of dissemination talks in schools and high schools of the Mar Menor. Eve Galimany, Marina Albentosa, Ángel Hernández and Sebastian Hernandis raised awareness about the importance of the bivalves as part of the estuarine ecosystems among the students of IES Manuel Tárraga, CEIP El Mirador and IES Ruíz de Alda of San Pedro del Pinatar and San Javier.
In early May, two workshops for fishermen were set up by RemediOS project in collaboration with the fishing guild Cofradía de San Pedro del Pinatar to present the Mar Menor initiative. Fiz da Costa and Monserrat Ramón talked about shellfish gathering, the fisheries and bivalve farming in the Galician estuaries and in Catalonia. Then, Marina Albentosa, presented the bivalve-based solutions for the Mar Menor and the possibilities for oyster farming and fishing.
The second fishermen workshop was attended by retired scientists who studied the oyster beds of the Mar Menor in the 1980s, sharing their knowledge about the fishery with the audience.
The workshops ended with a visit to the IEO facilities where flat oysters seed is currently produced using broodstock from the Mar Menor lagoon.
The researchers participating in RemediOS took advantage of the workshops to obtain direct testimonies from fishermen who had first-hand knowledge of the years when the flat oyster fishery took place in the Mar Menor in the early 1980s. This information will be integrated in the Historical Ecology study that is under development within NORA community.
RemediOS project is developed with the collaboration of the Biodiversity Foundation (Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge), through the Pleamar Program, co-financed by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF).
RemediOS project organized several outreach activities with schools and fishermen

School workshop. Photo: RemediOS project