Eco-Navigation: A Citizen Science Project

Archipelagos’ Eco-navigation project focuses on creating a citizen-science platform about observations of marine mammals (dolphins, whales, seals), sea turtles, invasive species and jellyfish blooms, as well as pollution incidents (plastic debris, oil slicks, etc.) or other unusual sightings. In this way we are in the process of forming a network of sailors, divers, fishermen and

Assessing the Grazing Activity of Sea Urchins

Sea urchins are herbivorous animals that live on rocky substrate and graze on macroalgae. Pollution and overfishing of their predators, led to massive increase of the sea urchin population across the Mediterranean. As a consequence, macroalgae forests has tended to disappear, causing cascades effects on other organisms that rely on this source of food and

Comparison of Microplastics Found Within the Gastrointestinal Tract of Caretta caretta

Megan J. Kelly, University of Salford Lauren .J. Kageler, Dickinson College   The pollutions of the oceans is a rising concern of environmentalists and researchers worldwide. Plastic production and its usage in several fields, from food packaging over water bottling to clothing, increased in the last years. Being cheap in production and durable over a

Mapping Seagrass Meadows With Specially Equipped Kayaks

The GIS (Geographic Information Systems) team of Archipelagos Institute is spread out over Samos and Lipsi islands. They work in collaboration with other teams to create tools that facilitate better research, field work and communication of data. This means that GIS projects encompass smaller, more supportive tasks in addition to their own major projects. The

Monitoring Strandings of Marine Mammals and Turtles

The Archipelagos Marine Mammal Research Team has collected for over 15 years, data from stranded marine animals including sea turtles (Caretta caretta), dolphins (Stenella coeruleoalba, Delphinus delphis, Tursiops truncatus), and monk seals (Monachus monachus) from various areas of Greece. The aim of this work is to determine potential hotspots in the Greek Sea and then

Development of a Methodology to Assess Anchor Damages on Posidonia Seagrass Meadows

Following the increase of coastal urbanization, 46% of the Posidonia oceanica meadows have disappeared or become threatened by a number of factors including boat anchoring. In the Aegean islands, where recreational yachting is a major touristic activity this environmental threat is an increasing problem. This can be backtracked to boat owners who are probably not

Photo-Identification of Short Beaked Common Dolphins (Delphinus delphis)

The Marine Mammal Team of Archipelagos Institute has for many years been collecting photographs of the populations of the resident Short Beaked Common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) while conducting boat surveys. This valuable photographic material is then processed to perform photo identification via mark and recapture techniques. The researchers and students of Archipelagos’ Marine Mammal Team

Research Assessing the Dietary Preferences of Golden Jackals

The Golden Jackals are opportunistic feeders, meaning that they will eat anything available, ranging from grapes and carobs to rodents and birds or even animal carcasses. The aim of this research project is to investigate the preference of seasonal and easy to find food, like carob or olives, with not so common, man-made food, like

Installation Project of Lipsi Base

On Lipsi Island, where the Aegean Marine Life Sanctuary will be located, the renewable energy team is aiming to create a research base and veterinary clinic that may fully function using renewable energy sources. With the average monthly sunshine on Lipsi reaching approximately 400 hours, and winter sunshine hours still above 100, solar panels are

Material for Awareness Raising on the Threats of Plastics

This month Archipelagos’ media team, in cooperation with Microplastics research team, worked on posters and leaflets as a part of an awareness raising campaign in regards to “Why we are moving away from Plastic”. The main goal is to enlighten the public on how small plastic particles can leach from plastic materials that we all use daily