Fatemeh Zahmatkesh developed her master thesis under AMALIA framework and the invasive species monitoring of the Iberian Coast. 2017. Fatemeh defended her master in Ecology on the 9^th of September at the University of Coimbra and the theme “Sampling, Mapping and Adding Value to Marine Invasive Seaweeds of the Iberian Peninsula”, under the supervision of AMALIA researcher Leonel Pereira and Rui Gaspar.

Negative impacts of marine invasions include loss of genetic diversity, ecosystem functions/processes, and/or community structure and, consequently, a threat to global biodiversity through biotic homogenization. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been proved to have positive effects on marine biodiversity conservation; however, their role in preventing biological invasions, especially macroalgae, is still poorly understood. In this context, AMALIA team has been studying the effects of protection and wave exposure on the abundance of invasive macroalgae at two MPAs of the western Iberian Peninsula, one located along the Spanish coast (Illas Atlánticas) and the other on the Portuguese coast (Berlengas).

The 10th European Conference on Marine Natural Products was hosted this year between the 3^rd and 7^th of September at the island of Crete (Kolymbari, Crete, Greece). The scope of the Conference is to stimulate the younger generation of European scientist in the ever-expanding fields of marine natural products chemistry and biology.

To add-value to AMALIA’s concept of creating products based on seaweds through biotechnology, it is important to understand invasive dynamics and also create technological tools to monitor their appearance in situ and send information concerning their biomass to the industry, thus advanced engineering and imaging systems and solutions will be integrated into an underwater system that will provide real-time information on the appearance and quantities of algae - thus enabling algae collection mechanisms for the industry before these algae impose major damage in the marine environment.

Hugo Alves, grant holder at project AMALIA, developed his master thesis based of the underwater monitoring tool being developed by INEGI, QUEST INNOVATION, and IPLeiria. Hugo defended his Master in Mechanical Engineering thesis on the 17^th of July at the University of Porto and the title “Design of a modular submersible platform for monitoring marine ecosystem (Benthic Lander)”, under the supervision of Tiago Morais, coordinator of the engineering work package of this blue labs project.