ASSOCIATE MEMBER

ATRIUM Environmental

Atrium Environmental connects the marine industry with science-based sustainability solutions. Their consulting helps organizations align environmental goals with business opportunity—guided by current research and expert knowledge.

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ASSOCIATE MEMBER

BLUEGent

BLUEGent is the business development center of Ghent University in the field of aquaculture and blue life sciences. Their goal is to upscale new research findings from the lab towards sustainable businesses – beit in the format of a spin-off, or a license with industry partners. Their in-house work focusses on advancing blue finance, by developing frameworks and methodologies at the intersection of marine and coastal ecology, finance, emerging markets and governance. They also document new value blue chains and perform blue techno-economic analyses.

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The two open calls — the Transition Agenda Open Call and the Community-Led Actions Open Call — were designed to fund organisations working to advance sustainable transitions in coastal and marine communities across the region.

Submission Results at a Glance

• Total proposals submitted: 222
• Transition Agenda Open Call: 61 proposals
• Community-Led Actions Open Call: 161 proposals
• Countries covered: All 11 eligible countries in the Baltic and North Sea region

Proposals were submitted from across the full range of eligible countries. In the Transition Agenda call, Norway, Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands were most frequently represented. In the Community-Led Actions call, the Netherlands, Poland, and Germany led in submission volume, with strong participation from Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.

The applicant pool was diverse. In both calls, locally-based commercial companies submitted the highest number of proposals, followed by research-performing organisations, NGOs, enterprises focused on skills development or inclusive blue economy activities, regional and local authorities, educational establishments, and foundations.

Mission Ocean and Waters Objectives Addressed

All submitted proposals aligned with one or more EU Mission Ocean and Waters objectives. Across both calls, the three most commonly cited goals were:

1. Protecting and restoring marine and freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity — the most frequently cited objective in both calls
2. Preventing and eliminating pollution of the ocean, seas, and waters
3. Making the sustainable blue economy carbon-neutral and circular

The breadth of themes reflects the scope of interest in the region and the relevance of the BlueActionBANOS funding framework to a wide range of actors and approaches.

What Happens Next

Evaluation is now underway, carried out by external and internal evaluators selected by a dedicated Selection Committee appointed by the BlueActionBANOS consortium. Applicants will be informed of outcomes in Autumn 2026, and selected projects will be announced publicly.

For more information, visit blueactionbanos.eu or contact Project Coordinator Sarah Tamulski at st@submariner-network.eu.

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The blue bioeconomy — spanning marine biotechnology, seaweed cultivation, bivalve farming, ocean-based ingredients, and more — is a growing sector with genuine demand for skilled professionals and innovative entrepreneurs. But awareness of career routes, training resources, and funding opportunities remains low, particularly for early-career professionals and start-ups across the EU.

Many people want to work in the blue bioeconomy but can’t find a clear way in. That is the skills gap Blue Bio Techpreneurs was built to address.

What Is Blue Bio Techpreneurs?

Blue Bio Techpreneurs (BBT) is an EU-funded project designed to create more accessible pathways into blue bioeconomy careers and entrepreneurship. Working together with BLUEBIO ALLIANCE, Pôle Mer Bretagne Atlantique, University of Southern Denmark, and University of Gdańsk, the project has delivered:

• 6 online courses reaching more than 3,000 learners across Europe
• 3 international hackathons tackling real blue biotech industry challenges
• 7 webinars on blue economy careers and innovation pathways
• A growing BlueBioMatch community connecting emerging talent with industry opportunity

Behind each number are researchers exploring new career directions, entrepreneurs finding their first industry connections, and students discovering that the blue bioeconomy is a place they can actually build a future.

What Is the MakeEUBlue Award?

The MakeEUBlue Awards, presented annually at European Maritime Day, recognise outstanding contributions to ocean literacy, blue economy innovation, and sustainable use of marine resources across Europe. The Organisation category honours institutions making a measurable difference in how Europe thinks, learns, and works with the ocean.

Why Closing the Blue Bioeconomy Skills Gap Matters

Skills gaps don’t close on their own. They close when institutions invest in making knowledge accessible, when researchers and businesses find ways to talk to each other, and when early-career professionals can see a realistic path forward.

That is what BBT set out to do, and what this award recognises. For SUBMARINER, it also validates a broader approach: that transnational collaboration across the Baltic Sea Region, done well, can produce results that no single institution could achieve alone.

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TIDAL ArtS (Transforming and Inspiring Aquatic Landscapes through Art and Sciences) is an EU-funded initiative under the Mission to Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030. It operates through two strands: the Lighthouse Projects and the Residency Programme. Both bring together artists, scientists, and communities to develop work responding to marine science, climate change, and biodiversity.

The Lighthouse Projects

From over 600 applications, 20 Lighthouse Projects were selected across four regions: the Atlantic-Arctic, Baltic and North Sea, Danube-Black Sea, and the Mediterranean. Each project develops site-specific public art in collaboration with local communities and scientists.

The Baltic and North Sea Projects

Five projects are underway across the Baltic and North Sea region:

The Sea Begins Here (Lithuania) draws on marine science and local memory to explore how coastal communities relate to the boundary between land and sea.

Oyster Matter (Netherlands) takes bivalves as a starting point for thinking about marine restoration, the blue economy, and the relationship between human activity and ocean ecosystems.

Hotel Kittiwake+ (United Kingdom) uses performance and public engagement to open conversations about North Sea biodiversity and habitat loss. A public showcase on a North Sea beach is coming soon.

Echoes of the Deep (Germany), developed by the Berlin-based collective NeoNature, is building a virtual diving experience and online community centred on the underwater world of the Baltic Sea.

Baltic Code of Signals (Denmark) draws on the historical language of maritime communication as a way into questions about how we read and respond to what the sea is telling us.

Seaweed Stories: The First Completed Project

The first TIDAL ArtS Lighthouse Project to complete is Seaweed Stories, created by Cracking Light Productions in County Clare, Ireland.

Over six months, the project invited residents of North Clare to explore the Liscannor Bay coastline through workshops in foraging, seaweed cooking, macro photography, and printing. The project culminated in an exhibition at the Courthouse Gallery in Ennistymon, showing prints, macro photography, seaweed pressings, and a hand-dyed tapestry made from coastline-gathered seaweed and community stories.

Explore the project

Fish in a Kettle: Immersive Theatre in Liverpool

From the Atlantic-Arctic strand, Fish in a Kettle by Lab Rats Collective ran at Fabric Studios in Liverpool in May 2026. The immersive show placed audiences inside a house party set in Liverpool in 2050 — a city battered by rising tides — and was developed in collaboration with marine scientist Dr Marta Payo Payo from the National Oceanography Centre.

The Residency Programme

Alongside the Lighthouse Projects, TIDAL ArtS runs a separate Residency Programme — four artists or collectives, each awarded €50,000 to develop a year-long project embedded in a host location connected to the EU’s ocean and water mission.

The four selected projects are:

Living Archive of Water — Clara Jo, Turku Archipelago, Finland. A film, photography and installation project exploring water as a living co-narrator of ecological memory and collective storytelling.

Counterfactual Hydrologies — Klara Kofen, Venice Lagoon, Italy. An exploration of the Venice lagoon’s past, present and future — as ecosystem, colonial archive, industrial body, and climate frontier — through the lens of the EU’s Digital Twin of the Ocean.

Azores From Below — Sonia Levy, Bint Mbareh & María Montero Sierra, São Miguel Island, Portugal. A project exploring submarine soundscapes and submerged histories of resistance in the Azores, drawing on collective voicing, oral histories, and participatory listening sessions.

Huso Huso — Adam Hudec & Monika Pascoe Mikyšková (Dusts Institute), Danube River, Hungary. A project engaging with the extinction of the beluga sturgeon as both ecological and cultural loss, working with Danube sediments processed into natural pigments and community workshops in Ráckeve.

Residency kick-off events are taking place now across Europe — Venice in May, Budapest in May, Turku in June, and the Azores in June. Final exhibitions are planned for Spring 2027.

Why Art Belongs in the Blue Economy

TIDAL ArtS is built on a straightforward premise: science tells us what is happening to our oceans, but emotional engagement with place is one of the strongest drivers of long-term behaviour change. Art is not a soft addition to ocean policy but an practical tool for building the public understanding that sustainable ocean economies depend on.

Explore all projects: tidalarts.eu

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“Durch gute Ostsee-Zusammenarbeit gewinnen alle” — “Through good Baltic cooperation, everyone wins.” Minis­ter­prä­siden­tin Ma­nue­la Schwe­sig

One topic gained particular weight across the discussions: water. As industries across the Baltic transform — through the expansion of clean energy, advanced manufacturing, and other water-dependent sectors — reliable access to industrial water is becoming a key factor in where businesses choose to grow.

The Baltic Sea, with its natural characteristics and expanding green energy capacity, offers real potential here. How the region develops and shares that potential across borders will matter increasingly for its competitiveness as a whole.

At the event, through our booth and the day’s session, SUBMARINER also had the opportunity to present our forthcoming role as Co-Location Centre for the Central and Baltic region within EIT Water. For Baltic business and investment stakeholders, EIT Water brings innovation funding and industry networks that sit directly alongside what SUBMARINER has been building across the region for years.

Through our network, BlueBioMatch, our blue economy matchmaking platform, and through the wider Mission Ocean ecosystem, we continue to build the connections that turn regional potential into something concrete. We look forward to the conversations ahead.

Interested in learning more about our work in innovation and business support?

Get to know our solutions

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The research examined 32 distinct forms of marine use and assessed their compatibility with one another. The most in-depth analysis focused on four combinations considered most promising for the German EEZ: low-trophic aquaculture (mussels, algae, and oysters), passive fishing with basket and trap gear, biogenic reef restoration, and various forms of mobile research.

A key finding is that several of these secondary uses are already permissible under existing German law, without requiring legislative changes.

Nature restoration through biogenic reefs and low-trophic aquaculture, in particular, were found to be technically and legally compatible with operational offshore wind farms, and even offer potential ecological co-benefits such as nutrient removal and habitat creation.

The study recommends designating a limited number of multi-use demonstration areas as a practical next step — sites where secondary uses can be tested at scale, data can be shared across sectors, and approval processes can be refined. It also calls for expanding preliminary site investigations to include parameters relevant to secondary uses from the outset, reducing downstream costs and delays.

The five work packages are available at the BSH website under Expert Studies and Reports.

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Im Mittelpunkt stehen insbesondere Kombinationen von Offshore-Windenergie mit Aquakultur, Fischerei, Naturwiederherstellung und Forschung.

Nachfolgend können alle Berichte der Studie eingesehen werden.

Arbeitspaket 1: Auswertung aktueller Erkenntnisse aus Forschungs- und Drittmittelprojekten zum Them…

Arbeitspaket 2: Auswertung von Mehrfachnutzungen und ihren Konzepten in ausgewählten Nordsee- und O…

Arbeitspaket 2: Auswertung von Mehrfachnutzungen und ihren Konzepten in ausgewählten Nordsee- und O…

Arbeitspaket 3: Untersuchung von in der deutschen AWZ realistisch in Betracht kommenden Kombination…

Arbeitspaket 4: Entwicklung eines Konzeptes für Mehrfachnutzung in der deutschen AWZ anhand konkret…

Arbeitspaket 5: Schlussfolgerungen und Empfehlungen für die Umsetzung des Konzeptes für Mehrfachnut…

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Commissioned by the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building (BMWSB), the study analyses legal, spatial planning, technical and cross-sectoral framework conditions in order to develop realistic and implementable multi-use concepts.

The focus lies in particular on combinations of offshore wind energy with aquaculture, fisheries, nature restoration and research.

All study reports can be accessed below:

Work package 1: Evaluation of current findings from research and third-party funded projects on the…

Work package 2: Evaluation of multi-use concepts and their applications in selected North Sea and B…

Appendix to Work Package 2: Evaluation of multiuse concepts and their applications in selected Nort…

Work package 3: Investigation of realistic combinations of maritime uses in the German EEZ

Work package 4: Development of a concept for multi-use in the German EEZ based on specific case stu…

Work package 5: Conclusions and recommendations for the implementation of the multi-use concept

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