The 10^th edition of Business2Sea organized by CETMAR Foundation and Fórum Oceano was held from the 16^th to 20^th of November 2020 in virtual format. The European Blue Biobank (EBB) project contributed to this event with an awareness workshop entitled “Do not be a biopirate: the European Blue biobank can help you use marine genetic resources legally”. Belén Martín Míguez, EBB coordinator, animated the workshop and Dr. Ibon Cancio from UPV/EHU (Spain) gave a first clarifying talk about how the importance of the Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) framework and Nagoya protocol for the conservation of global biodiversity, and the procedures that a user of marine genetic resources have to undertake for accessing them legally. Since regulations can differ between countries, Dr. Cancio showed in his presentation the central role of the Access and Benefit Sharing Clearing House (ABS-CH), a repository that facilitates the contact with the national focal points as well as pointing to the legal texts applicable in each country. Next, Fiz da Costa (CIM/UVigo, Spain), project manager of EBB project explained how the project had assisted more than 30 users to access marine genetic resources legally. Each use case has had its particularities: different provider country, different national regulations, different purpose of the experiments… Dr. da Costa finished his talk explaining the main lessons learnt from these use cases. A round table closed the workshop with users of genetic resources from different countries (Portugal, France and Spain) sharing their experiences in accessing and utilizing marine genetic resources. They highlighted some of the difficulties encountered and acknowledged EBB project contribution in helping them.

According to the polls launched during the workshop, half of the audience belonged to clusters/private sector and the other half to academic sector. The majority of the audience was not familiarized with all the steps needed for ABS compliance.

The presentations and videos of the workshop can be found here.

EBB partnership met virtually during three days, on 8^th, 27^th and 28^th October, to take stock of the progress made in the last year and plan the next and final actions before the project finishes on 15^th April.

They were intense sessions, where reporting on work packages was followed by short presentations by the partners.

Many new deliverables, finalised or closed to be in their final form were presented: amongst them, 1) an on-line EBB catalogue, a centralised gateway that will provide access to culture collections and biobanks held at EBB institutions; 2) the Handbook on implementation of EBB Best Practices; 3) a Step-by-Step guide on ABS compliance for commercial users, a report on the EBB Use Cases… the list goes on and the next months will be focused on the capitalization of all those outputs, making sure they are uptaken by other initiatives or projects.

During the General Assembly, the legacy of the project was also discussed, in particular, with regard to the European Marine Biological Resource Centre, EMBRC, under which EBB project is running. EMBRC will be the main depository of the main outputs. In particular, the Handbook on implementation of EBB Best Practices has already been endorsed by EMBRC, and in the future it will be submitted to be part of the EU Registry of Best Practices. The EBB online catalogue will eventually become an EMBRC catalogue for collections and biobanks from EMBRC members all over Europe.

In addition to EBB partners directly contributing to the project, the General Assembly counted on a number of guests from reputed institutions such as SANGER Welcome and the Scottish Association of Marine Science. EMBRC was also represented by its executive director Nicolas Pade, and its ABS officer, Arnaud Laroquette.

You can find the agenda of the Assembly here.

A virtual Quality Management Systems (QMS) training workshop for culture collections and biobanks from EBB partnership took place last week in the framework of WP4 (“Development of common methodologies for the management of Marine Biobanks”). The training had 6 participants from three EBB partners (CIIMAR, NUIG and UPV/EHU) involved in managing collections in their respective institutions, and 2 trainers from the University of Sorbonne (Priscillia Gourvil, Roscoff marine station) and University of Vigo (Sergio González, ECIMAT marine station), who are the QMS managers at their respective stations.

The training was hosted and organised by the University of Vigo (EBB lead partner) with Belén Martín Míguez (EBB coordinator) acting as facilitator. It ran over three days structured into ‘wake-up talks’ followed by lectures on QMS matters and hands-on activities. Topics covered during the lectures included “Fundamentals of QMS”, “QMS requirements for culture collections and biobanks” and “QMS documentation”. Additional topics of interest for the management of the collections like the Nagoya protocol or Cryopreservation techniques were also presented by Fiz da Costa and Estefanía Paredes respectively. The hands-on activities allowed the participants to consolidate and put in practice the concepts acquired during the lectures with the support of the trainers.

Overall, the training was highly informative for the participants, and fostered the exchange of experiences and ideas in a relaxed atmosphere. The participants will be initiating a QMS implementation process for their respective collections and biobanks in the next months, and they can count on the advice and support of EBB QMS trainers to guide them through the process.

EBB is a project that operates under the umbrella of EMBRC (European Marine Biological Resource Centre) research infrastructure and the results of this training will be a contribution to it.

The Plentzia Marine Station in the University of the Basque Country (PiE-UPV/EHU) hosted the 3^rd general assembly of the EBB project with a first day meeting on the Plentzia Marine Station in Plentzia and a second day in the “Bizkaia Aretoa” of the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao. The advances within each work package were discussed and way ahead during the last year of the project decided.

Within the assembly we hosted the Mini-workshop on EBB Quality Management Systems and a discussion on ABS Best practice guidelines in which Anne Nivart of CETAF and the French national Natural History Musseum and Juan Luis Gomez Pinchetti of the Spanish Algae Bank participated as invited experts.

The meeting was reflected in a short publication in the magazine Europa Azul:

Agentes se reúnen en el País Vasco para coordinar el Biobanco Marino Europeo

Belén Martín Míguez, coordinator of EBB project, together with Maria José Chapela, coordinator of Enhance Microalgae project (both Interreg Atlantic Area), organised the workshop “Fostering development of micro-algalbased industries: legal and practical aspects” which was part of the event Business2Sea that gathers annually stakeholders from the marine realm. The workshop firsrconsidered legal frameworks that can hinder exploitation of micro-algae. In particular, Fiz da Costa, from EBB project offered a talk on Nagoya protocol implementation. In the second part, two representatives from Neoalgae and A4f companies presented their activities and perspectives on those legal frameworks and how they impact their businesses. The audience (which included some other members of EBB project such as Vitor Vasconcelos and Guilherme Scotta from CIIMAR) participated in the debate.

One-day session “Bioresources: unlocking and accessing the potential of the marine environment”. Organized by PMBA and EMBRC-France. Summary: Marine bioresources are at the heart of economic activities in the maritime regions, providing the food we eat, the air we breathe, and to an increasing extent new products and a new frontier to explore in terms of biotechnological advances. Brittany and the surrounding regions have a wealth of expertise and projects valorising biological resources from the sea and continue to drive and innovate the biotech sector. This session gave a flavour of what Brittany has to offer of activities related to marine bioresources in public-private partnerships, industrial R&D, and fundamental research, and how to access the marine ecosystems, its biological resources and related expertise through the international network of research infrastructures present in Brittany. UVigo participated in the session, with Cristina Secades as speaker presenting the EBB project. Title: EMBRC Blue Biobank project: how to facilitate access to marine biological resources. Abstract: Accessing bioresources has become highly regulated and now requires very specific permits and steps to obtain them and to ensure that any benefits derived from them are shared with the country of origin. The EEB project is working to ensure that EMBRC can supply bioresources in line with current legislation, and develop best practices and guidelines for the public and private sectors.