To our knowledge, making EU project kick-off meetings public isn’t standard practice, but we wanted to involve as many community members as possible in ours. How awesome to have some return attendees from other MARE-Madeira community events, including young people from the Blue Startups Workshop and regular attendees at Bilhardar Ciência. 

We were honored with speeches from the President of the Regional Government of Madeira, Miguel Albuquerque, as well as the Rector of the University of Madeira, Sílvio Fernandes and the Director of ARDITI, Rui Caldeira in the opening ceremony. We are grateful for the support and enthusiasm our project is receiving from Madeira’s key decision-makers and stakeholders. 

Following presentations by our project partners (way to go, João, Jan and Martin!), we also welcomed our collaborators — long-standing partners and new faces — to share their work. 

Kirsten Jakobsen from the Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation, whose video footage has captured imaginations around the world in BBC and Netflix documentaries, shared the innovations past and present that have allowed the Rebikoffs to document the deep sea of Madeira, the Azores and beyond. 

And last but not least, Joana Xavier, Coordinator of the Deep-Sea Biodiversity and Conservation team at CIIMAR, shared the plans of her own Twinning project, TwinDEEPS. TwinDEEPS is the only other Twinning project funded in Portugal this year and is also a deep-sea-focused project! We’re excited to share training opportunities and learnings with this great team in Porto to help both our projects be as successful as possible.