Lisbon
Do you eat fish? Want to taste fish you've never eaten before? When the answer was yes (probably always) people were invited to sit down, try the plates of three types of fish that have no commercial value - soup, goat and horse mackerel - and fill in a small fish consumption questionnaire. Meanwhile? The investigators explain the whole surrounding question.
There are fish species that are caught and then discarded. Many at sea, others already on land, without any use. Therefore, MARE is developing new products based on these species also nutritional, which are desirable to the customer. This way, the ValoreJet project was introduced.
The other place was waiting for children who wanted to hunt shark or streak eggs in the sand, in this case of the Troia dunes. This is part of the Shark Attract project, one of the winners of the first edition of the Ocean Conservation Fund, the Lisbon Oceanarium and the Blue Ocean Foundation, whose MARE researchers participate and developed the famous application “The Great Egg Hunt”. Application that already has about 300 records, waiting for many more.
Are we medicating the environment? This was the key question for MARE's other “must-stop” on Lisbon night: the Biopharma project. With the increase of active compounds, human being increases too. But is it ruining the fish instead?
Active compounds are designed to be biologically active, to reach the body and go to a certain target, so they cannot be easily degraded to get where it is needed, and much of it is not absorbed by the body or metabolized, so it leaves by feces and pee. And the same goes for aquaculture and livestock. Problem? It reaches the sea..
The technology to analyze this type of compounds is still a little inaccessible, due to the difficulty and values practiced because the concentrations are low. But MARE researchers decided to investigate the waters first.
“We focused on the Tagus because of the population and because there was no information yet. We did a collection: in 92 waters - there weren´t nove even one clean ”explains the researcher Vanessa Fonseca. The worst concentrations were in the areas adjacent to urban centers - Lisbon, near the Etar de Beiroles, Almada, Baia do Seixal or Vila Franca.
The next job: analyze the minnows and other organisms. In this analysis we took antibiotics, antidepressants, anti-epileptics in sea bream, sea bass, crab, croaker, especially in the liver, the preferred accumulation organ, and perhaps some in the brain that a student is studying now.
And what is the solution to this problem? Improve treatment of waters, notably through ozonation - because when water goes through ozone many of the compounds degrade. However, this is still an expensive process.
Another solution is dream pharmacy - eco solution - so the drug has an active compound and often has the vehicle to reach the target. And it is this vehicle that can be greener, more easily degradable, so that its life span is shorter.
Evora
MARE at NEI 2019 in Évora participated in three ways: Stand "MARE goes out at Night"; teatcher Helena Adão presented and Researchers Sílvia Pedro and Catarina Mateus in "Cafés com Ciência"; Participation of Researcher Kasia Sroczynska in "Speed Dating Science and Art".
Madeira
La Vie Shopping Center, Madeira had about 2000 visitors, several ones groups of students from schools in the region. The message? It focused on the MACARONIGHT Project (Marie Curie Sklodowska / European Union Horizon H2020 project, http://frct.azores.gov.pt/project/macaronight/), which was on various islands in Macaronesia. The organization was carried out by the University of Madeira and MARE researchers were integrated into the board of the Madeira Ocean Observatory.
Coimbra
In Coimbra, some researchers attended the Science Museum of the University of Coimbra with the themes of Polar Science and the presentation of the book "Rios de Portugal".
Figueira da Foz
In Figueira da Foz, at FigueiraSea - Sustainable Alliance Expo, the researchers described the theme of fish resources and impacts and monitoring of marine litter.
