Within the ambit of the MED-JELLYRISK project and in commemoration of the European Maritime Day, the IOI-Malta Operational Centre (IOI-MOC) at the University of Malta is organising a two-day conference and training seminar on the 20th and 21st May 2014 in St. Julian’s, Malta.

The conference will visit different jellyfish-related thematics including an overview of different jellyfish-spotting citizen science initiatives across the Mediterranean and of innovative methods on how to deal with the jellyfish phenomenon, including smart phone applications, anti-jellyfish nets, jellyfish dispersion and forecasting models and biomolecule-extraction. A hands-on demonstration to local lifeguard groups by pharmacists on the basic tenets of jellyfish sting treatment will be conducted on a Maltese beach during the second conference day, along with demo deployment of an anti-jellyfish net on the same beach.

An abstract booklet for such a conference will be published and will be available online, on the project website, soon after the conference. Different stakeholders have been invited to participate within the conference, including aquaculture operators, beach management authorities, hoteliers and local administrative councils. The IOI-MOC’s contact on the MED-JELLYRISK project is Dr. Alan Deidun, whilst Prof. Stefano Piraino, from CONISMA, is the project’s Coordinator. The project is funded within the framework of the ENPI CBC-MED funding programme and includes CSIC (Barcelona, Spain), FSB (Bizerte, Tunisia) and INAT (Tunis, Tunisia) as partners, besides CONISMA and the University of Malta.