Following the 5 ship-time calls organized in EUROFLEETS2 and the 11 scientific cruises already carried out in 2014 and 2015, the EUROFLEETS2 Research Vessel operators involved in TransNational Access (TNA) have focused in 2016 on the scheduling of the other cruises selected for funding. Since April of this year, these are 12 cruises in total which have been carried out, most of them in Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea! The second leg of the ESAW cruise on board the Croatian RV BIOS DVA, BURSTER on board the German RV Polarstern, PANTHER and LGT Gioia-77 on board the Italian RV Minerva Uno, ISLAND and TAIPro-2016 on board the Spanish Angeles Alvarino, GRACO on board the French RV L’Atalante, BIO-OPT on board the Bulgarian RV Akademik, ReCoReD on board the Romanian Mare Nigrum and 3 cruises – CRELEV-2016, LGT AMORGOS-56 and SEMSEEP – on board RV Aegaeo from Greece. With EUROFLEETS2 expected to end in February 2017, the priority of the coming months will be the scheduling on the remaining funded cruises such as the ANTSSS project on board the Italian RV OGS-Explora and which should take place in Antarctica in January-February 2017.

Cruises carried out so far represent more than 220 funded days at sea, with multi-national teams of scientists of complementary expertise and a strong training component since many PhD, MSc and undergraduate students have been involved in onboard and onshore teams. A lot of positive feedbacks from involved scientists have been received, so highlighting the potential of such TNA activity to develop cooperation networks and to open up possibilities for future collaboration at European and international level.

At the autumn 2016, EUROFLEETS2 is also strongly involved in several communication actions linked to its Research & Development activity. As regards software tools developed in the project, EUROFLEETS2 partners attended several conferences such as the INMARTECH 2016 conference(4-6 October in Bergen, Norway, session on data management and ship-shore communications) and the IMDIS conference (11-13 October, Gdansk, Poland) for presenting the EVIOR platform, the data acquisition tool and the EARS event-logging system developed in the project. During INMARTECH 2016 not only presentations were given, but also a side session with online demonstrations of EVIOR and the advancing ship data acquisition system and more in-depth technical discussions. The working group has announced the upcoming EARS-Version 2 Workshop that will be held on 3-4 November in Vigo with operational tests on board the RV Sarmiento De Gamboa. Should you be interested in participating in this onboard workshop as a ship operator or as a scientific user, please find the workshop agenda and any useful information at the following link.

On Monday 10 October 2016, EUROFLEETS2 also organized an event as part of the IRSO meeting (Capri, Italy). The Workshop focused on presenting and discussing the draft results of the EUROFLEETS2 work package on Regional RV design and successfully gathered 27 project’s researchers and RV operators (members of IRSO) and 13 industry representatives of shipyard, ship designers and others with expertise in Research Vessels (overall 40 participants). The EF2 results were well received and there was a lively discussion on several topics. The Workshop was followed by an Industry Exhibition allowing participants from research and industry to highlight their activities and products for Regional RV's and to establish contact for further exchanges, also with the IRSO members. There were 8 industry stands, multiple posters and interactive presentations which also added to further dialogue on EF2 results.

The EUROFLEETS2 will organize a Final Conference on Tuesday 31st January 2017 at the Auditorium of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, to present the major project outcomes. The agenda will be available soon on the project website. Please note that this event is by invitation only, if you are interested in attending the conference, please email to infrastructures@eurocean.org.

For more info on EUROFLEETS2 activities and results, please visit the new project website at eurofleets.eu!

View the EUROFLEETS 10th Newsletter here.