Pitch

The CAscadeR1 team consists of students from the First Rijeka Croatian High School (PRHG) and students from Carlo Cafiero high school (Italy).We jointly decided to monitor the implementation of the CASCADE project (CoAStal and marine waters integrated monitoring systems for ecosystems proteCtion and managemEnt),whose main goals are to develop a set of concerted and coordinated actions including monitoring and management to raise awareness about the issue, to evaluate the quality and assess the vulnerability of inland, coastal, and marine ecosystems in Italy and Croatia with the final objective to restore endangered species and to support integrated management.

We chose this project because we wanted to focus on the marine ecosystems because we wanted to raise awareness in our cities' people about the problems of the world’s seas.The only way to do this was to choose the Cascade project as the one we had to focus on because it talks about the same things and because we believe that the topic the project deals with is extremely important and relevant and the contribution to the protection and preservation of the ecosystem is important.

Another reason we chose this project emerged from the fact that we lived in a city near the sea so we could see with our eyes what really are our sea’s problems and involve other people to help us to solve them.

The CASCADE project was implemented as part of the INTERREG Italy – Croatia program from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2022 in a total of 11 pilot areas on the Italian and Croatian coasts. The leading partner on the project was the Italian region of Apulia. The total project budget was EUR 5,817,547.00, and the European Union co-financed 85% of the total project costs from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

The Croatian part of the team with their civic initiative called "A Drop in Sustainable Cascade" tried to investigate the contribution of the CASCADE project to the protection and management of ecosystems and to spread awareness about the implementation and goals of the aforementioned project in Croatia.The goal of this citizens' initiative was to point out the importance of cross-border cooperation and to encourage transparency in the implementation of EU projects. In addition, the desire is to use the initiative to encourage the decision-makers in the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County to implement similar projects in our county. 

While the Italian part tried to analyze the major problem of the seas like:

• Increasing temperature of the sea related to the presence of the chlorophyll;
• Presence of a huge crowd of plastic;
• Oil disaster that increase the death of the marine biodiversity;
• Presence of the poisonous algae which can be the reason why there is a decrease of beaches crowding.

Our seas, in addition to being an essential ecosystem for global biodiversity, also play an important role in the development and the economy of our society, so we have to preserve it. The problem, as we proved in a survey  we gave to the students of our school, is a generally poor knowledge and awareness about the “health condition” of the marine ecosystem.
To achieve the goal of promoting a greater feeling about the sea, we analyzed the marine biogeocenosis in various aspects, in particular:
    • Plastics;
    • Oil disasters;
    • Presence of chlorophyll related to the temperature;
    • Poisonous algae;
    • Coast’s kilometers
The situation of the world’s seas, in relation to the data provided by the various studies we conducted, shows two problems that have been discussed for decades: oil disasters and the presence of plastic waste in the seas.
From the data we analyzed we can understand that more than 60% of marine pollution consists of various plastics. The most important example of this tragedy is the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, an enormous island completely flooded with plastic.
Throughout history a series of oil disasters occurred and started to engrave the condition of the marine ecosystems. Oil is a resource that has always been part of man’s life and has always been extracted because it’s a resource that, when converted, generates a lot of energy.The oil extraction process is risky, otherwise we would not b e talking about oil disasters at all. These generally cause the death of marine species and the pollution of the sea water. Through history happened 15 oil disasters where more than 6 million tonnes of oil have been dumped into the sea, with huge damage to the marine ecosystems.
As already said, another important problem of our planet, and particularly of the seas, is the global warming. In order to evaluate this problem, we studied the Copernicus dataset and we collected several data about the surface temperature of the sea and the concentration of the chlorophyll. So we discovered the relationship between them.
Another problem that affects our seas is the presence of poisonous algae, which causes us to dislike it more and more. The poisonous algae that is more present nowadays in the Atlantic sea is the Ostreopsis Ovata.
We can realize the presence of the algae from a jelly layer on the surface of the sea but also from the color of the sea’s water. Generally the algae increases when the temperature of the sea is higher than 25°C and if the seas are subjected to strong winds.
The Italian and Croatian coasts are similar in many aspects, however the Italian coast has a longer overall length than the Croatian one. In conclusion, after all these research we can declare that our seas are slowly dying and because of the fact that they are an important part of our life, we have to make things right and not take advantage of it. We can compare seas to our life, they are both messy and still unexplored, so as we preserve our life we have to do the same with the seas. For this purpose, we have to fight global warming and avoid leaving plastic waste in the sea.

As part of our civic monitoring, we sought to explore the CASCADE project's contribution to ecosystem protection and management as well as to spread awareness of the project's implementation and goals. We were interested in how and to what extent the implementation of the CASCADE project contributed to the protection and preservation of marine ecosystems in the Adriatic Sea. Considering that the project has ended, we can conclude that the project has caused some visible and positive changes. Unfortunately, not enough time has passed yet to be able to conclude to what extent the implementation of the CASCADE project and the achievement of its goals were successful. With this in mind, we propose further monitoring of activities in the pilot areas, such as, for example, monitoring the increase in the population of the endangered and protected Pinna nobilis and other endangered species, as well as a continuous analysis of the quality of seawater. In addition to the above, we propose the implementation of further scientific research with the aim to compare the results in order to determine the effectiveness of the interventions undertaken in the pilot areas. Also, after carrying out research with representatives of the project partners, we believe that the involved counties should have informed a larger number of citizens about the goals of the project and its implementation and encouraged them to be more actively involved and contribute to the project activities. We hope that in the future, additional educational workshops will be carried out in which a larger number of citizens will be involved since the preservation and protection of marine ecosystems also depend on the human factor. We hope that because of this project citizens will become aware of the problems and join us in solving them. We will continue to monitor the results and positive changes that the implementation of the CASCADE project will result in.