Ana Paula Lima

Abstract
One way to mitigate the high costs of doing science or business at sea is to create technological infrastructures possessing all the skills and resources needed for successful maritime operations, and make those capabilities and skills available to the external entities requiring them. By doing so, the individual economic and scientific agents can be spared the enormous effort of creating and maintaining their own, particular set of equivalent capabilities, thus drastically lowering their initial operating costs. In addition to cost savings, operating based on fully-fledged, shared infrastructures not only allows the use of more advanced scientific equipment and highly skilled personnel, but it also enables the business teams (be it industry or research) to focus on their goals, rather than on equipment, logistics, and support. This paper will describe the TEC4SEA infrastructure, created precisely to operate as described. This infrastructure has been under implementation in the last few years, and has now entered its operational phase. This paper will describe it, present its current portfolio of services, and discuss the most relevant assets and facilities that have been recently acquired, so that the research and industrial communities requiring the use of such assets can fully evaluate their adequacy for their own purposes and projects.

Abstract
Blue Growth, a term first coined by the European Commission as an initiative to harness the untapped potential of Europe's oceans, seas and coasts, identified rich marine resources as an unique asset for economic development in coastal regions and on islands. The European Commission has through the Blue Growth objectives for the first time highlighted marine sectors as unique market opportunities with high growth potential which carry socio-economic importance to the development of coastal regions. Particularly marine sectors such as aquaculture, marine robotics, and marine renewable energy which fulfil global needs in food safety and security, enable monitoring and exploration in harsh and remote conditions, and globally growing energy needs were recognized as catalysts to achieve sustainable development. Marine start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) were identified as potential drivers in emerging marine sectors. However, they require support mechanisms tailored to their needs as they are competing for the same business and financial support as land-based SMEs, yet the research and development infrastructure is more difficult to access. ProtoAtlantic, an Interreg Atlantic Area funded project, provided marine-specific support mechanisms to marine start-ups and SMEs in emerging sectors, including business support through the accelerator and mentorship programs, enabling companies to fast track their product development through access to prototyping and testing facilities in all partner regions. The Interreg Atlantic Area encompasses partner regions in France, Ireland, Portugal, Scotland, and Spain. The consortium partners consist of Technopole Brest Iroise (Brest, France), University College Cork - UCC (Cork, Ireland), County Council Cork (Cork, Ireland), INESC TEC (Porto, Portugal), the European Marine Energy Centre - EMEC (Orkney, Scotland), EMERGE (Canary Islands, Spain), and the lead partner, Innovalia Association (Canary Islands, Spain). The strategic collaboration between the partners provided marine start-ups access to testing facilities in the Atlantic Ocean. The extreme living laboratories provided by EMEC, the LiR National Ocean Testing Facilities at UCC's Centre of Marine and Renewable Energy (MaREI centre), and INESC TEC promise harsh real-life conditions which test the suitability of marine technologies to the limit thereby providing start-ups and SMEs with an extra layer of confidence in developing their technologies. This cross-regional collaboration puts the ProtoAltantic program in a unique position, as it is the first of its kind to dedicate marine-specific support to marine start-ups and SMEs which have benefited from the opportunities that ProtoAtlantic has provided. ProtoAtlantic developed a holistic model for the prototyping and exploitation of innovative ideas in emerging maritime sectors. After the identification of ideas from the research community, start-ups, and SMEs with product innovation capacity in the maritime sector, an acceleration program with a normed and structured process was implemented, thus creating a unique ecosystem in the Atlantic that is addressing a co-creation paradigm with the local European start-ups communities and all the stakeholders.

Abstract
The Feedfirst Intelligent Monitoring System is a novel tool for intelligent monitoring of fish nurseries in aquaculture scenarios, mainly focusing on monitoring three essential items: water quality control, biomass estimation, and automated feeding. The system is based on machine vision techniques for fish larvae population size detection, and larvae biomass estimation is monitored through size measurement. We also show that the perception-actuation loop in automated fish tanks can be closed by using the vision system output to influence feeding procedures. The proposed solution was tested in a real tank in an aquaculture setting with real-time performance and logging capabilities.

Abstract
This paper presents an autonomous robotic system, IRIS, designed for lost fishing gear recovery. The vehicle was developed in the context of the NetTag project. This is a European Union project funded by EASME the Executive Agency for Small and Medium Enterprises addressing marine litter, and the reduction of quantity and impact of lost fishing gears in the ocean. NetTag intends to produce new technological devices for location and recovery of fishing gear and educational material about marine litter, raise awareness of fisheries industry and other stakeholders about the urgent need to combat marine litter and increase scientific knowledge on marine litter problematic, guaranteeing the engagement of fishers to adopt better practices to reduce and prevent marine litter derived from fisheries. The design of IRIS is presented in detail, addressing the mechanical design, hardware architecture, sensor system and navigation and control. Preliminary tests in tank and in controlled sea conditions are presented and ongoing developments on the recovery system are discussed.

Abstract
The knowledge on diet composition of the freshwater mussel Diplodon enno (Ortmann) would aid in its culture and propagation allowing, this way, the replacement of natural endangered populations in Brazil. Microalgae are the main food source for captive mussels and unionids have displayed an ability to sort algae based on the cellular characteristics prior to ingestion. The main objective of the present work is to analyze the phytoplankton composition of the water from and of the gastrointestinal contents of the mussel D. enno, as an initial step for development of a suitable rearing diet. Therefore, water samples and bivalve specimens were collected from S. Francisco River, city of Paulo Afonso, Bahia, Brazil. The microalgal composition found in water and stomach/gut content samples was very diverse being represented by the following divisions: Cyanophyta, Chlorophyta, Dinophyta and Heterokontophyta (Diatoms). Concerning the relative abundance of microalgae divisions, it is possible to state, for the water and gastrointestinal contents, that Cyanophyta represents 15% and 14%, Chlorophyta 54% in both, Heterokontophyta 31% and 27% and Dinophyta 0% and 5%, respectively. According to the Brazilian CETESB criteria for phytoplankton species classification, 50% of Cyanophyta and 15% of Chlorophyta species observed in the water samples were classified as "very frequent", as were 68% of Heterokontophyta and 33% of Chlorophyta species in the gut/stomach tract samples. Focusing at a species level, although in the water only Coelastrum sp. and Chroococcus sp. were observed in 100% and 75% of the samples, respectively, in the gastrointestinal tract the species Staurastrum sp., Aulacoseira sp., Scenedesmus sp. and Fragilaria crotonensis occurred in 80% to 100% of the samples. The present results showed that D. enno feeds not only on small chlorophytes microalgae, due to their convenient size that facilitates higher feeding rates, but also on large size diatoms, due to a possible nutritional advantage for the bivalves. Thus, a diet composed by large diatoms and small chlorophytes microalgae may be considered as the most reasonable for the maintenance of D. enno populations.