Centro Velico Caprera renews its collaboration and closeness with One Ocean Foundation and launches a project that is both research, dissemination, culture and love for the sea and seafaring art. The idea is called MARE, where the acronym stands for Marine Adventure for Research & Education and consists of a great 12-week journey in the Tyrrhenian Sea that will touch 23 of the over thirty Italian marine reserves and two areas of interest.
The start will be on 30 April from La Maddalena, where the day before at the NCO School of the Navy (which gives its patronage to the initiative, supported by various sponsors) an event will be held that will act as a preview. The MARE boat is a 45-foot catamaran, renamed One, which will set sail from the Archipelago where there is also the headquarters of the Sailing Center – founded in 1967, one of the universities of sailing, courses and sea culture – on Porto Palma to Caprera, Alghero, Cagliari and then Palermo, Syracuse and Catania to go up the boot with stops in Calabria, Campania, Tuscany and Liguria, where One will land in the Cinque Terre, Portofino, Bergeggi and then return to Porto Palma crossing the Cetacean sanctuary.
At each stage there will be events to promote the dissemination of knowledge of the sea, on each boat there will be different guests, who will flank the captain-captain and his deputy, these permanent members of the catamaran, coming from the Caprera Sailing Center. The trip will also see a part of scientific research, with researchers who will collect data that will become a sort of “zero point” of the state of the Tyrrhenian Sea, considering that a monitoring such as the one that the initiative intends to do dates back to 1970, for use and development of the next generations.
“Our scientific protocol is based on some key themes such as the collection of samples of zooplankton organisms, natural bioindicators of environmental pollution, to evaluate the presence and bioaccumulation of persistent contaminants, but also on the monitoring of marine biodiversity, through DNA sampling environmental ”, explains Ginevra Boldrocchi, scientific coordinator of One Ocean Foundation.
There is a manifesto, drawn up by the promoters and partners of MARE, which defines the objectives and commitments of the initiative. They were remembered this morning in Milan during the presentation of the project, among others, by the president and general secretary of the Caprera Sailing Center Paolo Bordogna and Enrico Bertacchi, together with the president of One Ocean Foundation Riccardo Bonadeo. It also speaks of values, which start above all from respect for the sea and its protection (“they are in the DNA of the sailing center”, Bordogna recalled), which is accompanied by knowledge (“because only by knowing the problem can one find solutions ”, Bonadeo said) and its disclosure.
One’s journey has begun.