Three days of lectures, field practice, and co-creation to fast-track the MSc in the Sustainable Blue Economy.
The Winter School took place 3–5 November 2025 at the University of the Aegean (Mytilene, Lesbos), combining campus sessions, lab visits, a full-day field excursion in Western Lesbos, and hands-on tool demos aligned to BLUE-ERA’s MSc rollout.
What we did:
- Day 1 – Foundations & labs: Open lectures spanned Marine Spatial Planning (Geoinformatics), coastal erosion & flooding exposure in the NE Aegean, CLIMPACT—Greece’s national climate network & ocean sciences, internationalisation of Marine Sciences, health management in intensive aquaculture, and emerging tech & citizen science on aquatic invasive species. Sessions included department lab visits and an ERUA workshop on the Psychology of Climate Action.
- Day 2 – Field excursion: We visited the Natural History Museum of Sigri, the Monastery of Ypsilou, observed erosion at Skala Eressou, watched birds at the Kalloni Salt Pans, stopped in Petra, and wrapped with sunset views over Molyvos.
- Day 3 – Practice & co-creation: A (weather-permitting) coastal boat practice with Amphitrite, course-design work on the “Coastal Zone Management” MSc module, demos of CrowdWater and BlueCoast, applied talks on port vulnerability and visitor carrying capacity, a lecture on harmful algal blooms via satellite remote sensing, a MoU ceremony, Cartography & Entomology lab visits, a coordination meeting with the Project Officer, a marina visit on port systems, and parallel working groups on Psychology of Climate Action, Migration, and Law.
Why it matters: The Winter School directly advances WP4 — Go-live: programme implementation, giving teaching staff shared methods, field techniques, and tools to deliver the new MSc across partner universities.
