Special thanks go to Dr. Martina Milanese who presented MERCES at the Blue Symposium in Blanes (https://bluesymposium.wordpress.com/) with results from MERCES ongoing meta-analytical work, here focusing on the distribution, degradation status and threats to sponges and anthozoan assemblages in European Seas.

The Blue Symposium, organised by the three EU-funded projects BluePharmTrain (http://www.bluepharmtrain.eu/en/bluepharmtrain.htm), SponGES (www.deepseasponges.org) and Atlas (http://www.eu-atlas.org/), has pooled together researchers and industrial respresentatives around  the key themes of Blue Growth and Blue Biotechnology.