54th European Marine Biology Symposium

The 54th European Marine Biology Symposium was held in Dublin from 25-29 August 2019. The event gathered a large delegacy of scientists involved in marine biology and ecology research from Europe and beyond. The presentations focused on four main themes, i.e. the rapid changes of organisms, communities and ecosystems, the movement and redistribution of species, biological traits and the blue growth. Dr. Maria Vittoria Marra (NUIG-National University of Ireland Galway) presented the poster ‘EBB – The European Blue Biobank’ to illustrate mission, approach and outcomes of the EBB project and the role played by NUIG in it. The poster presentation gave Dr. Marra the chance to engage with the audience about the participation of Ireland in EBB as well as in EMBRC, which was also present at the symposium with a dedicated stand.

“Collections as an educational resource”. 7th European Phycological Congress

During the 7th European Phycological Congress (EPC) in Zagreb in August 2019 a group of the leading algal culture collections organized a satellite meeting to present and discuss topics relevant to the running of major international culture collections. During this meeting, Ian Probert (Sorbonne University) hosted a roundtable discussion topic entitled “Collections as an educational resource”. In addition to presenting the involvement of the Roscoff Culture Collection in taxonomy courses, the activities of EMBRC and the EBB project relating to educating Biological Resource Centre users about Access and Benefit Sharing issues were presented and discussed. EMBRC and EBB flyers were also distributed during the EPC (ca 500 participants).