EurOcean participated in the ideation of DG MARE’s upcoming hackathon – HACK4OCEANS, on February 12th, in Brussels. The purpose of this workshop was to set out the specific problems within the four very broad challenges that the participants of HACK4OCEANS will address in April:

• Ocean and climate change
• Marine litter
• Alternative food from the ocean
• Protecting and restoring coastal ecosystems 

The workshop participants included representatives from European institutions (i.a. DG MARE, DG DEFIS, DG RTD), universities (i.a. TU Delft, U Porto, U Gent), as well as a number of other organizations (SCIAENA, European Maritime Spatial Planning Platform, European Marine Board, European Boating Industry), private-sector companies (P&G, Microsoft, Avanade, others), and two of EurOcean’s Members - VLIZ and the Submariner Network for Blue Growth.

This was a great opportunity for EurOcean to collaborate with some of its European peers in developing an initiative that aims to inspire Europe’s younger generations to tackle present and future challenges with social and technological innovation.

A big thank you to DG MARE for having invited EurOcean to be onboard this fantastic initiative. We are looking forward to April 29 – 30.