CORDIS Express: Using but not abusing our marine resources
Europe's seas and oceans offer us so much: a source of fresh, nutritious food, a transport and trade route, a vast renewable energy resource and a world of underwater creatures and organisms ripe for research. Our seas and oceans offer us a seemingly endless range of species and organisms with healing, nutritional and otherwise unique properties that throw up fascinating uses in the lab. For example, researchers estimate that there may be as many as 594 232 novel compounds waiting to be discovered in unstudied marine species, and that these could lead to between 55 and 214 new anti-cancer drugs. However, our marine environment is also feeling the effect of human activities as we continue to heap pressure on marine ecosystems. In fact, the European Environment Agency recently reported that less than 20 % of Europe's marine habitats and ecosystems are labelled as having a 'good status'. Excellent, cross-cutting science and innovation projects have a role to play here. They can help us to achieve a thriving and sustainable maritime economy, and protect the environment from the negative costs of human interference. Just as oceans ignore borders, marine research projects must often be cross-cutting and involve many disciplines. Marine and maritime research actions are taking place across the different thematic priorities and specific programmes of FP7. Take a look at the links below to read about some exciting ongoing and recently concluded research projects in this area: - Coral reefs that may be resistant to climate change(opens in new window) - New ways of cultivating valuable marine microorganisms(opens in new window) - Europe's changing marine environment(opens in new window) - Marine environment research in Tunisia(opens in new window) - Easy data recovery from the seabed(opens in new window) - Observing objects in the ocean(opens in new window) - Hovercraft to clean ocean oil spills(opens in new window) - Deep-sea fish and their ecosystems(opens in new window) - The future of offshore platforms(opens in new window)