From 14 to 20 September 2026, coastal communities across Europe took part in the European Marine Citizen Science Week, an initiative coordinated by the EU-funded BioEcoOcean project to encourage citizens, organisations and local communities to observe and document marine and coastal biodiversity. This initiative brought together the collaboration in between BioEcoOcean, Pharos and ANERIS European projects.

MINKA observatory has been used as the reference citizen observatory during the 2026 European Marine Citizen Science Week edition. During this week over 4,200 observations were registered, reporting more than 600 species by almost 100 participants.

For ANERIS, the event presented an opportunity to connect our local Communities of Practice from Spain, Portugal and Italy with a broader European-wide initiative. This reflects one of the key ambitions of ANERIS: strengthening collaboration between coastal communities while creating opportunities for their local knowledge and observations to contribute to broader biodiversity monitoring efforts.

More information about the event is available at BioEcoOcean project's webpage.