What do coastal professionals need from ENHANCE’s tools—and how can we make them more useful in their daily work? These questions guided our latest Living Labs and exploitation workshops in Volos and Barcelona on 16 and 19 October 2026.
The two events marked an exciting step for ENHANCE, bringing our tools and research results to a wider audience across both case study locations. Through presentations, demonstrations and participatory exercises, participants explored the tools and shared the practical needs that will guide their further development.
Volos: connecting One Health, coastal monitoring and local needs
On Friday 16 October, the University of Thessaly’s Department of Ichthyology and Aquatic Environment welcomed health experts, veterinarians, academics and fishers for a workshop dedicated to the Pagasitikos Gulf.
Rector Charalambos Bilinis and Vice-Rector for Innovation, Internationalization and Digitial Governance Chrysi Laspidou opened the event and introduced the project, setting the scene for presentations from the ENHANCE team.
Alexandra Ioannou explained the One Health concept, which recognises the connections between human, animal and environmental health, and presented its adaptation to coastal areas through relevant indicators. Evmorfia Bataka then demonstrated how Earth Observation data and remote sensing support the monitoring of turbidity and chlorophyll-a. Nikos Kokosis showed how these data feed into the risk maps available through the ENHANCE platform.
The presentations were followed by a short survey and discussions led by Georgia Tseva. Participants shared their immediate needs and considered how ENHANCE’s tools could support their work, helping the team connect the platform’s capabilities with priorities from the field.
Barcelona: bringing citizen science into the conversation
On Monday 19 October, Andreu Fornos and Jaume Piera welcomed participants to the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM) in Barcelona to explore the tools being developed for the Barcelona Urban Beaches case study.
Their presentations highlighted the integration of data from the MINKA citizen science observatory to help monitor biodiversity along the Catalan coast. This offered participants a closer look at how citizen observations contribute to understanding coastal ecosystems and their health.
Inna Petrenko and Oihana Luque Armand led a participatory exercise gathering participants’ perspectives and first-hand experiences. Professors, healthcare professionals, water quality specialists and city representatives discussed their professional objectives, the challenges they encounter and the tools and resources they need.
Following the tool demonstrations, participants rated the tools according to their usefulness for their own work. Their responses provided valuable feedback on how ENHANCE can better support different professional roles.
Turning feedback into further improvements
Across both locations, the enthusiasm and constructive discussions showed encouraging connections between ENHANCE’s results and the needs expressed by participants. The workshops also provided valuable input to help both case study teams refine their tools ahead of their public release.
These exchanges are central to the Living Lab approach: involving the people who may use the tools in shaping their development. By bringing research results into conversation with practical experience, ENHANCE is taking another step towards tools that respond to coastal communities’ needs.
Thank you to everyone who joined us, shared their experiences and contributed to these discussions.
Stay tuned—we will be sharing more insights from both events soon!
Did you miss these publications? Two studies, developed with support from the ENHANCE project, show how the One Health approach can help local decision-makers and the private market manage coastal risks.
Coastal authorities already collect a lot of information: bathing-water quality, pollution levels, biodiversity, seafood safety, animal disease and human illness. The problem is that these signals are gathered and read separately, so it is hard to see how a change in one area affects the others. A pollution event, for example, may lower water quality, contaminate shellfish, close beaches and strain local livelihoods, yet each consequence is recorded by a different institution, in a different dataset, for a different purpose.
Two publications from the University of Thessaly, developed with support from the ENHANCE project, respond to exactly this problem. Together they answer three questions:
How has coastal and marine One Health research evolved over the past two decades, and where are the gaps?
Are human, animal and environmental health really being studied together?
Can a single framework assess the health of people, animals and ecosystems in a coastal area at the same time?
The two publications
One Health in Coastal and Marine Contexts: A Critical Bibliometric Analysis Across Environmental, Animal, and Human Health Dimensions – Alexandra Ioannou, Evmorfia Bataka, Nikolaos Kokosis, Charalambos Billinis and Chrysi Laspidou – International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2025.
The first maps more than twenty years of scientific literature, tracing the development of coastal and marine One Health research and identifying its gaps. The second proposes a conceptual framework for assessing human health, animal health and environmental ecosystem quality together.
Definition and origin of the One Health Approach
One Health has deep roots. The 19th-century physician Rudolf Virchow already argued that “between animal and human medicine there are no dividing lines”. The modern term took shape in the early 2000s, when international health and veterinary bodies formalised the idea that human, animal and environmental health must be addressed together. One Health is simply the recognition that these three are interconnected, and that each can be protected effectively only when the other two are taken into account.
One Health assessment framework for coastal areas
The second publication proposes a Coastal One Health framework built on three linked indices: a Human Health and Socio-economic Well-being Index, an Animal Health Risk Index and an Environmental Ecosystem Quality Index. Each draws on concrete, measurable indicators, such as bathing-water bacteria, seafood contamination, harmful algal blooms, antimicrobial-resistance markers and sea-surface temperature. Brought into a single structure, these indicators make it possible to see where environmental, animal and human health signals move together and where they diverge.
The framework is at the conceptual stage, with a pilot planned in the Pagasitikos Gulf in Greece, so it is not yet an operational tool. But it defines the structure that will now be tested, refined and adapted.
Why does this matter for decision-makers and the private market?
Local authorities and businesses working on the coast face the same practical problem: the environmental, animal and human health data they need live in separate systems, managed by separate institutions. This fragmentation makes it hard to answer basic questions, such as whether a drop in water quality is linked to a rise in shellfish contamination or to illness in nearby communities.
This is where the framework shows its value, for public authorities and for businesses alike:
For a municipal officer or a water-quality specialist, it means anticipating coastal risks and taking decisions on the basis of reliable, up-to-date data, instead of reacting after the fact.
For an aquaculture farm, it means being warned in time about harmful algal blooms, so the owner can protect the stock and avoid losses.
For a coastal fisher or a veterinarian, it means working with reliable data on the water quality and the environmental zoonotic risks of their area, instead of guessing.
This is the benefit the ENHANCE tools offer the private market and local decision-makers: a shared way to assess coastal health across its three dimensions, aligned with existing EU policy instruments.
Our 3rd ENHANCE Newsletter is here, bringing you a snapshot of what has been keeping our teams busy throughout 2026, on the ground, at major European events and across our growing community.
🌊 From citizen science and biodiversity to AI, new collaborations and fresh content, there’s plenty to catch up on as we continue working towards healthier and more resilient coastal ecosystems through the One Health approach.
👀 And there’s more on the horizon! Get a glimpse of what’s coming next as ENHANCE approaches its third and final year, with important milestones and activities ahead.
👉 Ready to catch up? Dive into Newsletter #3 and discover what’s been happening across ENHANCE!
Citizen scientists have already documented 1,467 taxa along the Catalan coast through MINKA, with contributions from 282 observers and 76 identifiers. The records include 29 invasive alien species and 97 taxa with direct legal protection.
BioMARató 2026, running from 2 May to 15 October, has reached the halfway point with 46,920 biodiversity observations submitted to the BioMARató 2026 (Catalonia) project on the MINKA citizen science platform. The data, accessed on 29 July, cover 1,467 different taxa, including species and genera, and represent one of the largest verifiable marine biodiversity datasets generated through citizen science in Catalonia this year.
These results have been made possible by the involvement of hundreds of participants and the collaboration of the 2026 mobilising organisations: Federació d’Activitats Subaquàtiques (FECDAS), Anèl·lides Serveis Ambientals Marins, Plàncton Diving, Oceánicos, and All Blue Diving. So far, 282 accounts have shared biodiversity photographs on MINKA, while 76 identifiers have helped validate the records and improve their taxonomic identification. The initiative is supported by the EMBIMOS research group at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC), which manages the MINKA platform.
The figures highlight the potential of citizen science to expand knowledge of the distribution of coastal and marine biodiversity. However, the number of observations should not be interpreted as a measure of abundance. It reflects participant activity and is influenced, for example, by site accessibility and by how easy each organism is to detect and photograph. Fish currently account for 41.2% of all observations, followed by molluscs (11%), cnidarians (8.2%), sponges (7.2%) and echinoderms (5.7%).
Citizen scientists record 29 invasive alien species
The mid-season dataset includes 784 observations of 63 species classified as alien, 29 of which are listed as invasive alien species according to EXOCAT and/or the Spanish Catalogue of Invasive Alien Species.
These observations are valuable for mapping the presence of alien species and detecting potential new hotspots. Although the number of observations does not correspond to the number of individuals or the area occupied, it provides a useful indicator for tracking these species over time.
Among the algae, the red alga Asparagopsis taxiformis stands out: with 177 observations, it is the most frequently recorded invasive species to date. A Mediterranean study associated dense stands of this alga with reduced habitat complexity and biodiversity compared with native algal forests. BioMARató data help document its presence and detection frequency along the Catalan coast. A further 20 observations of Asparagopsis armata, another invasive red alga, have also been recorded. Both species had already been reported in previous editions.
The Asian brown alga Rugulopteryx okamurae has been observed in the provinces of Barcelona and Girona. The species is included in the Spanish Catalogue of Invasive Alien Species and is covered by a national control strategy. Spain’s Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) notes that it can extensively colonise hard substrates and affect native benthic communities, making the mapping of detections particularly relevant. Observations of the invasive green alga Caulerpa cylindracea have also been recorded in all three coastal provinces.
Two invasive crab species are also noteworthy. Percnon gibbesi has been recorded 44 times. This alien herbivorous crab has spread rapidly across the Mediterranean, underlining the importance of continued monitoring. The blue crab (Callinectes sapidus), meanwhile, has been observed along the entire Catalan coastline.
Citizen observations have also documented numerous protected species. To date, 97 taxa with direct legal protection have been recorded under the Catalan, Spanish, European or international regulations consulted. Of these, four are listed as endangered and 20 as vulnerable. In addition, 23 taxa are included in Annex II of the SPA/BD Protocol, which covers endangered or threatened Mediterranean species.
Taxa listed as endangered include two brown algae that form underwater forests, Cystoseira foeniculacea and Gongolaria squarrosa, both included in this category in the Catalogue of Threatened Flora of Catalonia. These algae provide structure and shelter for many marine organisms. Among the birds, Audouin’s gull (Ichthyaetus audouinii) is also listed as endangered in Catalonia.
Two elasmobranchs stand out among the taxa included in Annex II of the SPA/BD Protocol: the spiny butterfly ray (Gymnura altavela, 14 observations) and the bull ray (Aetomylaeus bovinus, six observations). According to the IUCN Red List, the bull ray is assessed as Critically Endangered both globally and in the Mediterranean. The spiny butterfly ray is assessed as Endangered globally and Critically Endangered in the Mediterranean. These records are particularly significant given the high extinction risk faced by both species.
BioMARató has also recorded the common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and the short-beaked common dolphin (Delphinus delphis), both listed as vulnerable in Catalonia, together with vulnerable coastal birds such as the common tern (Sterna hirundo) and the pied avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta).
Another highlight is the Mediterranean pillow coral (Cladocora caespitosa), a habitat-forming cnidarian listed as vulnerable in Catalonia, for which 121 observations have been collected. This volume of records demonstrates BioMARató’s capacity to document benthic organisms of conservation interest, not only large or easily visible species.
BioMARató 2026 remains ongoing until 15 October. Until then, organisations, institutions and individual participants can join the initiative, submit new observations and help document biodiversity along the Catalan coast.
How can we better understand and protect our coastal ecosystems? In our second thematic video, we take a closer look at the ENHANCE One Health Framework, the innovative approach that brings together human, animal, and environmental health into a single operational system for coastal management
By connecting data on climate impacts, pollution, biodiversity, marine life, public health, and socioeconomic activities, the framework helps uncover how pressures on coastal areas affect both ecosystems and communities. Built around three core dimensions—human and socioeconomic well-being, aquatic animal health, and environmental quality—it transforms complex information into indicators, risk indices, and early warning signals that support informed decision-making.
Developed in collaboration with local authorities, scientists, aquaculture operators, and communities, the One Health Framework enables more coordinated and effective responses to emerging coastal challenges.
Watch the video here or on Youtube to discover how ENHANCE is turning data into practical tools that strengthen coastal resilience and support sustainable coastal management across Europe.
