The 6th International Scientific Conference on Industrial and Hazardous Waste Management was completed in Chania, where Archipelagos Institute participated with 3 scientists and researchers who presented 4 scientific publications.

Research director of Archipelagos Institute, Anastasia Miliou, chaired the session on “Marine Pollution”, which focused on the analysis of the high-risk marine casualty in Greek seas. Emphasis was given to the Sea Diamond accident, which after 11 years of abandonment in the seabed of Santorini continues to pollute marine ecosystems with dangerous toxic substances and the wreck of Agia Zoni II, which once again proved the inadequacy of the state mechanism regarding the prevention and the dealing with maritime accidents.

As a result, the risk of a major maritime accident, which can cause disastrous effects on marine ecosystems, local communities, public health and, of course, the economy and tourism is undermined at any moment.

This issue is a priority research target for Archipelagos Institute of Marine Conservation, aiming not only at raising the problem to public authorities and the general public, but also developing and submitting comprehensive proposals, risk assessment software and other tools that will can be part of the solution to this complex and particularly serious problem.

Essex University researcher Gareth Thomas presented the first results of the research carried out by the University’s Hydrocarbon Laboratory in collaboration with the Archipelagos Institute, with the support of the British National Environmental Research Council, aiming to determine the impact of the wreck of Agia Zoni II on marine ecosystems.

Long-term toxicological and microbiological research is important not only to determine the impact of the oil spill, but also to develop knowledge that will be valuable for the future exploitation of hydrocarbonaceous bacteria to combat oil spills using biotechnological methods.

Eleonora Faraggiana, a researcher at the Archipelago Institute, presented the highly alarming results of her research “Microplastic Contents in Commercial Fishing Products from the east Aegean” where 100% of the analyzed fish contained microscopic plastic fibers.

Finally, a special session was dedicated to the joint action of FORTH Crete, the Technical University of Crete, the Archipelagos Institute, the University of Cardiff and the University of Cyprus Oceanography Center,

aiming to develop scientific information on marine pollution in the form of videogames that will be used by teachers and students, under the Sea4All program.

The 6th International Scientific Conference on Industrial and Hazardous Waste Management was organized by the Technical University of Crete, the University of Padua, the Hamburg Technical University, the International Waste Working Group (IWWG) and the Tsinghua University of China.

See the full texts of the publications in the following links:

• G. Thomas , B. Archer , T. Cameron , L. Hepurn , T.J. Mcgenity , A. Miliou , T. Tsimpidis , C. Whitby and B.A. Mckew Quantifying a Marine Ecosystem’s Response to a Catastrophic Oil Spill, Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Industrial and Hazardous Waste Management, Crete 2018

• Miliou, N. Flashner, M. Robbins and V. Dias (2018) Shipping Risk Assessment: A Case Study For Greek Waters ,Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Industrial and Hazardous Waste Management, Crete 2018

• E. Faraggiana, G. Pietroluongo, B. Quintana, K.G. Dexter, H.Moore and A. Milou(2018)Variation in Microplastics Content Detected in Commercially Important Marine Species of the Eastern Aegean Sea, Greece,Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Industrial and Hazardous Waste Management, Crete 2018

• Miliou, B. Quintana , E. Kokinou, T.M. Alves , A. Nikolaidis and G. Georgiou (2018) Enhancing Students Critical thinking about Marine Pollution using Scientifically-based Scenarios, Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Industrial and Hazardous Waste Management, Crete 2018