On November 22 the Matosinhos Environmental Monitoring and Interpretation Center held a webinar under the theme “BioMARatona Norte: Beaches with life.” The event took place in Porto, Portugal and was hosted by Dr. Rocío Aimé Nieto Vilela, researcher at CIBIO Biopolis (University of Porto). 

The presentation focused on the BioMARatona Norte initiative, which is committed to engaging the general public in scientific research and biodiversity data collection along the beaches of Northern Portugal, enabling more citizens to contribute to science and conservation. The organisers shared insights on the most frequent challenges that the initiative faces, highlighting the difficulty of designing tools that are accessible and easy for participants to navigate. Additionally, during the presentation various examples were shown, demonstrating how the tools developed in the ANERIS project helped the initiative grow faster and promote citizen science.