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October 4, 2023 Rachele Bordoni, Francesco Misurale, Jean-Baptiste Sallée, Sebastiaan Swart, Alex Brearley, Svein Østerhus, Alberto Naveira Garabato, Wonsun Park, Nicolas Gruber, Renuka Badhe, Antonio Novellino


Globally, food security, human health and human well-being are under serious threat because aquatic ecosystems and natural fi sheries can no longer sustain the production of living aquatic resources. Furthermore, agricultural expansion cannot meet future human food needs without massive impacts on ecosystems. OLAMUR is an innovative Horizon Europe project that promotes commercially viable and sustainable Multi-Use Low-Trophic European Operational Oceanography for the Ocean we want - adressing the UN Ocean Decade Challenges / 165
Aquaculture (MU-LTA) in wind farms or fish farms in offshore waters. OLAMUR aims to bring together the existing state-of-the-art practices in the key sectors related to MU-LTA
in order to develop and demonstrate a sustainable solution for commercial MU-LTA (e.g., seaweed and mussel farming) in both low and high salinity, high eutrophic and high energy
offshore waters. Through a holistic and interdisciplinary approach, the project proposes to demonstrate the possibilities of co-use of marine space and how multipurpose low-trophic aquaculture can
contribute to more resilient and sustainable food production with low impacts and emissions. Indeed, MU-LTA has several environmental, social and economic benefits, contributing to the achievement of many Sustainable Development Goals. MU-LTA has a low stress on the climate and the environment, preserving the ecosystem integrity, without damaging fisheries and not being dependent on agricultural feed. Low-trophic aquaculture reduces import dependency and food and nutrition insecurity, and tackles malnutrition. A strength of OLAMUR is the direct involvement of producers and stakeholders as direct partners of the project throughout the decision-making process. OLAMUR, strongly encouraged by European Community, will contribute to the improvement of marine data standardisation, accessibility and interoperability, also through EU programmes and projects (e.g. Copernicus, EMODnet), enhancing access to observational data at all stages of their life cycle, and fostering the development of integrated services targeted to research, regulatory and operational users. A data-based service system will be developed to support policy makers in making knowledge-based smart decisions, and innovative
governance arrangements and related policy levers will be developed to achieve effective and sustainable governance of multiple uses. The system aims to support producers in all
stages of the production chain, including planning, implementation, operation, production, impact assessment, commercialisation, and capacity building. Moreover, the proposed system will provide useful information for estimating the potential and prospects of colocalised low-impact aquaculture. For this purpose, the relevant data, information, products and standards for the establishment, operation and evaluation of such a solution will be monitored, simulated, stored and customised. OLAMUR focuses on three geographically and ecologically diverse pilot sites in the Baltic
and North Seas to test and demonstrate the feasibility and replicability of multi-use lowtrophic aquaculture and the possibility of multi-use of marine space.