Partner Meeting in Tallin, Estonia

A group od people at conference in an office.

The CONTRA project partners met on 01-02 Oct 19 in the beautiful city of Tallinn, Estonia. At the meeting, the partners exchanged views on the current state of project activities and discussed initial results.

In order to estimate the impact of beach cleaning activities, a comparison of beach wrack samples, taken from selected managed and unmanaged beach sites around the Baltic Sea Region, is being made. The monthly sampling started in April/May this year in Germany, Poland, Estonia, Denmark and Kaliningrad and will continue until November 2019. The following analyses of organic content, in combination with nutrient availability and wrack residence times, are intended to understand the specific ecological consequences of beach wrack removal. This information, as well as assessments of the co-removal of litter and nutrients/pollutants, will support local authorities with their future implementation of more sustainable beach management plans.

A position paper on the status of existing beach wrack recycling technologies, being tested within seven model studies in the Baltic Sea region, is being submitted within the next few weeks to the international journal ‘Ocean & Coastal Management’. It is a prelude to further publications on the topic including the project’s main output, the ‘Toolkit’ of sustainable treatment options.
The CONTRA partners heard an interesting presentation by Jonne Kotta (Estonian Marine Institute, University of Tartu) from another Baltic Sea Region “sister” INTERREG project GRASS (“Growing Algae Sustainably in the Baltic Sea” 2019-2021). Possible collaboration and scientific exchange between the two projects will now certainly be put into place.
The very interesting and successful event was made possible thanks to the Estonian Ministry of Environment and the University of Tartu, who organised it.
The next CONTRA partner meeting will take place in early spring 2020 in Koege (Denmark).
Keep up to date with all project activities by visiting our Facebook page @beachwrack.CONTRA

Tallinn, Estonia

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