Black Sea Action Day – speaking up for a clean and healthy sea!

This year, the focus of the event was on offering participants a sensory experience, stimulating all the senses and raising awareness on the problems of the Black Sea, at the same time making sure that everyone is safe and respecting the social distancing rules. However, the situation in Romania doesn’t allow public events for the moment. Thus, the Black Sea Action Day will be held online and it will be full of surprises!

The Mare Nostrum team kept the idea of a sensory experience and prepared interactive online games with eco-prizes (personalized face masks, to be in trend), in which the participants are stimulated to react to different behaviour types, regarding the sea and litter. We will offer useful information, in a visually impactful way, but also audio recordings for people to „guess the waste”.

Another challenge is „Find the intruder”, in which there will be presented pictures with sections of „natural landscape” of the beach and the participants will have to find the elements that don’t belong there. Also related to marine litter, we will post pictures and messages with an abandoned fishing net that we retrieved recently from the Black Sea, with the help of fishermen.

A very engaging part of the event will be a live session (in Romanian language only) with members of the Mare Nostrum team, on our Facebook page. Everyone will be able to interact with us and ask questions, offer suggestions or present their ideas and needs, related to the main topic.

During the live session, we will be addressing also the EU4Ocean Coalition, measures that can be taken for a clean and healthy Black Sea, ocean literacy and information about the numer of marine litter items found on the seashore, during the second annual monitoring. Each year, Mare Nostrum NGO performs two marine litter monitoring sessions (in spring and autumn), according to the MSFD methodology. The data is sent to all public authorities concerned and also uploaded on the EMODnet portal.

The event will start on the 31st of October, the official Black Sea Action Day, from 10:00 EET, and it will continue for a few days.

*The event is organized under the project "Improving online public access to environmental monitoring data and data tools for the Black Sea Basin supporting cooperation in the reduction of marine litter - MARLITER", BSB 138, funded by the Black Sea Basin 2014-2020 Operational Program. The overall objective of the project is to promote a stronger cross-border integration of information, knowledge and expertise in the field of environmental monitoring and marine waste issues in the Black Sea basin.

The event is also supported by OMV Petrom.*