#OceanCities Month's Second Round Ends with Global Activities

In its second installment, #OceanCities Month brought together institutions from three cities -Barcelona, Buenos Aires, and Antioquia- and invited hundreds to join in activities

Published on 03 November 2023 | news

A person standing at a table with a group of people
© OC Network

News item written by the team of the Ocean Cities Network Programme

These events, which took place from October 1st to October 30th, were organized by the Ocean Cities Network (OC-NET) in collaboration with the Centre de la Platja, the Nautical Salon, the Posidonia Green Festival, the University of Antioquia (Colombia), and the Center for Research on the Sea and Atmosphere (Argentina).

The first edition of the #OceanCities Month was held in 2022 with the participation of only the city of Barcelona. However, this year, with the network's growth, the celebration expanded, allowing an increasing number of people to connect with the sea from a different perspective and engage with the city and the ocean in a more comprehensive way.

In Buenos Aires, a series of talks on oceanography and climate change were organized for kayakers and students (see picture). In the Turbo district, within the Urabá subregion of the Antioquia department in Colombia, various activities were organized, including a field trip to the Titanic Beach, where work was carried out with the local community to improve a coastal protection experiment initiated in April of this year.

A group of people sitting in a room with a speaker
© OC Network

In Barcelona, one of the standout activities was the BioMARató, an initiative funded by European projects MINKE, ANERIS, and ECS. The objective was to encourage citizen participation in the assessment of ecosystem biodiversity along the Catalan coast. This year, -just in Barcelona- almost one hundred volunteers contributed over 15,000 observations to the MINKA citizen science platform.

From beach cleanups for children, photo exhibitions, and documentaries on the ocean's climate crisis to roundtable discussions on fishing sustainability and the passions driving the sea, this second edition of the #OceanCities Month successfully engaged with the three axes of the OC-NET: health, culture, and social justice, to better understand, feel, and govern the ocean.