Public Funding for Plymouth Marine Laboratory

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ProBleu will expand and support the Network of European Blue Schools, attract a wide diversity of new members, improve ocean and water literacy across school communities, and contribute to the objectives of the Mission, in particular (1) to protect marine and freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity, and (2) to prevent and eliminate pollution. ProBleu recognises that a significant change in environmental education is needed to foster broad societal responsibility towards oceans and waters and to encourage related behavioural change. ProBleu will develop and offer a pool of innovative, practical resources based on methodologies of Open Schooling. Besides several actions to promote, encourage participation in, and increase the diversity of the Network, two resources, currently lacking from the majority of school curricula, are explored in ProBleu: (1) those related to what is collectively known as ‘citizen science’, with work undertaken by educators together with communities to advance science, foster a broad scientific mentality, or encourage democratic engagement, which allows society to deal rationally with complex modern problems, and (2) the interaction with scientists in the field. Collecting and analysing data through citizen science ensures that student activities contribute directly to fostering their ocean and water literacy. Students engaging with the work of scientists (e.g. through direct interaction, or following the work on ocean research cruises) have shown improvements in learning in the past, but this opportunity tends to be limited to relatively few or privileged schools. These resources will be complemented by stimulating the connection between people and the places where they live. By fostering relationships between the school communities and their local waters, ProBleu will assist schools in developing project activities related to the Mission.

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Traditional morphological or image-based classification of marine taxa is time-consuming, requires specialist knowledge and is near impossible for certain life forms (e.g. fish eggs). An alternative approach that has lately received a great deal of interest is the use of so-called environmental DNA or 'eDNA'; the DNA signature that animals leave behind either through shedding skin cells, reproductive stages or through decomposition. eDNA offers the opportunity to study the population structures of fish communities, regardless of life stage, and without the need to catch and count manually. This vital data supports fish stock assessment and fisheries management (_e.g._ spawning areas, seasons, recruitment, simultaneously for multiple fish species), and will aid in our understanding of drivers of change. At Applied Genomics, we have developed technologies that can automatically collect large quantities of eDNA from the marine environment and have developed protocols to semi-quantify fish species abundance. Making use of the weekly sampling taking place at the Western Channel Observatory long-term biodiversity monitoring site, researchers at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory have been collecting smaller water DNA samples since 2012\. Working together, our aim is to compare the data on fish taxa derived from DNA methods with those from conventional catch-and-count methods in order to refine our DNA methodologies, improving the technology readiness of Applied Genomics' automated large volume eDNA sampler. At the same time, we will provide detailed insight into changes to the seasonal structure of fish populations over time at the Western Channel Observatory.

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"If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." If you cannot measure something and know the results, it is very hard to get better at it. If you wanted to improve the green efficiency of your house, a smart meter allows you to monitor how much energy you are using and allow you to make changes if you need to. This project will act as a smart meter for port emissions, enabling port managers to easily see where GHGs are being emitted and allowing them to make behavioural (or regulatory) change. The UK is one of the world's leading maritime nations. Its status is built upon a remarkable historical foundation, geography, and a large and vibrant economy. The Sixth Carbon Budget brings forward the UK's emission reduction target by nearly 15 years. This project brings together a prominent UK Catapult (ORE Catapult), the UKs leading offshore test facility (Smart Sound) and highly skilled UK software developers (CSL) to tackle one of the biggest issues of our time -- Vessel emissions. While the UK leads the world in terms of innovation, it is essential to track where any future innovation will have the most impact. The proposed project develops a digital platform that gathers, analyses, and trends the emissions associated with vessels at port, providing key information on where and how emission reductions can be made. The Key project objectives are: ●Establish and develop a software platform fit for purpose (emission monitoring) ●Have the platform gather information on port and vessel activity ●Run algorithms to determine emission impact from the vessel activity information ●Create knowledge insights from the emission impact data to enable change ●Analyse, report, and disseminate key findings to a wide audience. This project builds upon proven solutions to provide an innovative approach to the analysis of vessel emissions, a sector that, to date, has lacked a clear analytic methodology. It will utilise the ION Geo Marlin solution as a base, proven over more than 150 global deployments, to integrate data from an existing activity database. The resulting solution will provide historical backlogged performance analytics as a baseline, as well as close to real-time performance analytics via a range of standard dashboards that will enable the port and vessel operators to review performance.

The MARLIN STAR project is the next phase in the development and commercialisation of an innovation that will enable coastal community access to stored and transferable energy from floating renewables. It supports several of the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development and particularly #7 'Affordable and Clean Energy'. It will revolutionise traditional construction techniques for building large floating platforms. The MARLIN underwater construction system employs patent protected buoyancy and orientation control. It enables structures consisting of uniform sized hexagonal interlocking modules to be constructed at the point of use. Float Modules fit into standard ISO shipping containers for easy transport to any location. Mass manufacture techniques and assembly without the need for large port infrastructure or large floating cranes will reduce costs. Realistic energy access will bring significant improvements to quality of life in the most deprived areas. The MARLIN STAR project assesses the market and social conditions for implementation of floating offshore wind energy generation, storage and transfer in Bangladesh and India. A socio-technical approach will be used to inform the design, to optimise the longevity of future installations, and to enable local operation and maintenance by the communities independently. Numerical analysis and laboratory tests will be conducted at internationally recognised research facilities.ODA FUNDING REDUCTION AMENDED TO : A PROTOTYPE MODULAR FLOATING FOUNDATION WITH A WIND TURBINE WILL BE TESTED IN A REDUCED WATER DEPTH 'TOW-OUT' CONDITION IN A DRYDOCK

Production-purpose antibiotics are one of the great Faustian bargains of the modern era: mankind has traded increased livestock yields today for AMR tomorrow. We propose that microalgae can be readily engineered to express a wide range of naturally occurring antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory compounds which can both substitute for production-purpose antibiotics as a means of maximizing feed/energy conversion ratios and treat serious bacterial infections. Our objective in this project is to unequivocally demonstrate this using multi- functionalized microalgae (MM) modified to accumulate two such agents in a series of rigorous field-trials in both healthy and E.coli (K99)-infected calves. Our project is innovative in that MM can not only express these & numerous other functional biochemical compounds, but also constitute a uniquely low-cost and practicable platform technology. 350 million Chinese still live on less than $3/day and microalgae is the only combined expression/delivery system capable of synthesizing the full range of bioactive agents required for managing the complexity of intestinal flora which can be cultivated by both industrial-scale and LMIC artisanal farmers alike.

Since the1950s the use of chemical fertilers has grown exponentially to cope with the increased consumption of food. The use of chemical fertilsers has led to contamination, disease prone plants, reduction of microbial organisms that support soil life, etc. On the other hand organic fertilizers improve soil structure, improve water retention, enhance soil fertility and can be easily broken down by microorganisms. Although, methods to increase the organic fertilizer use have been looked into for the last few decades, the cost of production, the amounts needed to sustain the growing population and technological innovations are lagging behind to compete and replace chemical fertilser use. Biulding on previous work by this consortium, here we propose the use of microalgae, an ancestor of land plants,as a sustainable source of high value organic compounds that help crop growth; microalgae simply require natural sunlight and water to grow. The aim of this project is to identify the compounds responsible for the increased plant growth and then to extract them. In this manner we have contol of the exact amount of organic compound required for maximum crop growth.

A biorefinery uses biomass rather than crude oil to produce energy or chemicals. The term 'biorefinery' is routinely articulated in IB circles, but the concept has, as yet, never been fully realised. The objective of this project is to generate robust process economics for a fully-fledged biorefinery that will not just break even but moreover prove highly profitable. If successful, the project will then generate £24.5m investment from the Malaysian Govt. to realise the technology at scale. The project will involve functionalising microalgae to produce a range of products that can be separated using a low-cost continuous flow downstream processing system. It is innovative in that it will marry the best aspects of the conventional oil refinery (100% feedstock utilisation & high throughputs) with the best aspects of IB (functional complexity and environmentally benign processing).

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