The 6th International Marine Connectivity Conference (I-MarCo 2021) took place at the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris (France), in December 2021 (6-8th).
This dissemination event, which gathered over 100 participants from more than 20 countries, combined the final international event of the iMarCo initiative (2016-2020) and the first annual meeting of SEA-UNICORN.
Launched in 2016, the iMarCo initiative (https://wwz.ifremer.fr/gdrmarco/) aimed at promoting the emergence of collaborative projects to investigate marine connectivity in Europe. This scientific network already counted >50 members (from France, UK, Belgium and Greece) and covered a broad spectrum of marine science disciplines (physical oceanography, natural tags, genetics and evolutionary ecology, behavior, tagging, fisheries and aquaculture science). It gave birth to that of SEA-UNICORN, which now counts >180 active members (from 45 countries) and includes scientists from additional (complementary) research disciplines and varied marine stakeholders.
The first two days of the event were dedicated to the presentation of 33 scientific oral communications (including 4 keynotes) and 38 posters in the field of Marine Connectivity. 38 members of SEA-UNICORN (from 15 countries) attended it, presenting 3 keynotes, 10 talks and 20 posters, all in link with the study of Marine Functional Connectivity (MFC) at varied spatial, temporal and taxonomic scales, but also with MFC knowledge requirements for marine spatial planning and policymaking.
The last day of the event was dedicated to the annual joint-meeting of the four Working Groups (WG) of the Action, with a presentation of the main advances since November 2020 for each WG, followed by cross-group brainstorming sessions on:
How to link organisms' functional traits to their connectivity potential
How to manage & conserve marine systems despite changes in MFC due to Climate Change
How to foster the uptake of MFC data & knowledge by stakeholders
Over 50 members of the Action attended this hybrid meeting, either on site (31), or remotely via Zoom. It was also the occasion to present the network and its activities to ~10 conference participants that were not yet members of SEA-UNICORN.
For more information, please visit http://www.6imarco.fr/
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