The ARIEL Plus  project is co-founded  the Interreg VB ADRION Cooperation Programme 2014/2020 and intends to capitalize and extend the results and the methodology tested within the previous project ARIEL that promoted innovative and sustainable practices in the small-scale fisheries and aquaculture sectors. The project intends to make the best use of the ARIEL approach, tactics and tools developed in 3 years of joint implementation, capitalizing, and widening the ARIEL knowledge network and the cooperation put in place between local/regional/national public authorities, research bodies, small-scale fisheries and aquaculture socio-economic operators .
 Built on a deep understanding of these two sectors challenges at regional and ADRION level as well as on a set of policy and technical recommendations delivered in the previous project, ARIEL PLUS - despite its short duration (8 months) - is expected to:

• boost the transnational dimension of ARIEL results and knowledge by means of raising awareness activities and events for beneficiaries and stakeholders of small-scale fisheries and aquaculture sectors at local and Country level;
• give its transnational contribution to leverage future initiatives and investments on fisheries and aquaculture sectors by capacity building of potential beneficiaries and by supporting co-creation processes for the application, designing and management EU project proposals;
• widen the ARIEL innovation community set up in 2020  towards new members and new cooperation opportunities;
• improve the operability of the existing ARIEL Platform, conceived as virtual place where small-scale fisheries and aquaculture actors can meet, exchange knowledge and cooperate.

To this aim the six involved partners coming from Italy (including Marche Region), Croatia, Montenegro and Greece are working together to organize Innovation brokering events, joint project design workshops and open days in the  Adrion area as well as to feed with further contents related to mall-scale fisheries and aquaculture the platform “ARIEL Blue innovation Community” (https://www.arielbluecommunity.eu/), also providing for  co-working tools and thematic support.

Project Partners

• CNR -IRBIM – National Research Council  - The Institute for Marine Biological Resources and Biotechnology – Lead Partner  (Italy)
• Marche Region  - Directorate of Productive Activities and Enterprises (Italy)
• IOF – Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries (Croatia)  
• Public Institution RERDA SD for coordination and development of Split Dalmatia County   (Croatia)
• Kotor Marine Biology Institute – University of Montenegro (Montenegro)
• Region of Western Greece (Greece)

Ruolo ASSAM: support to the Marche Region

Project duration:  January 2022 – August 2022

Project total budget: € 148,947.10

Project website : https://ariel.adrioninterreg.eu/