TREC partner snapshot: University of Basque Country Plentzia Marine Station
A ‘supersite’ for field research and public outreach provides optimal environment for exchange
Ibon Cancio was the key liaison for TREC's visit to Bilbao, and he also conducted tours in Spanish and Basque of the EMBL's Advanced Mobile Laboratory. Credit: Massimo Del Prete/EMBL
The power of partnership
After collecting ~70,000 samples of water, soil, sediment, aerosols, and select species, EMBL finished the lion’s share of the field sampling from its Traversing European Coastlines project. However, none of that work – as well as work to come – would be possible without a wide variety of partners.
“TREC is pan-European. It is multidisciplinary. And it has been one of the most collaborative scientific projects aimed at studying coastal ecosystems across scales with a holistic approach at an unprecedented scale,” said Paola Bertucci, EMBL’s Head of Scientific Expeditions. “No institution can do this alone; project success relies on a shared vision, motivation, and extraordinary knowledge from TREC partners who share our commitment to excellence. Together, we ensure that TREC is carried out at the highest standards, creating an impact that resonates across Europe’s scientific landscape.”
Thus far, more than 90 institutions have joined the TREC mission, lending their expertise, while also reaping benefits from EMBL’s experts and unique technological tools. As scientists now pore through the massive amount of data they have in their midst, scrutinising materials with cutting-edge technology and tools, we present a series of short articles reflecting on the collaborative work the project cultivated.
Whether it was organising logistics, procuring a boat for plankton tows, giving tours and leading enthusiastic engagement activities with the public, or waiting for a specific kind of marine worm to show up and mate during the middle of the night, Ibon Cancio was there for TREC in so many ways when the expedition team visited Basque Country.
As TREC’s key liaison there, Cancio seemed to know all the right people in all the right places to help this visit run smoothly. Plentzia – approximately 20 minutes outside of Bilbao – was one of TREC’s eight ‘supersite’ visits during its field sampling in 2023. The supersites involved intensive field sampling along the coast, training events, scientific lectures, and engaging outreach with the general public on land as well as the Tara schooner. And, in this case, the scientists and EMBL’s Advanced Mobile Laboratory (AML) stayed in Plentzia anywhere from two weeks to up to a month.
Cancio, a marine biology researcher at the University of the Basque Country in Spain, studies marine environmental health, particularly the effects of pollution and climate change on aquatic organisms. The Plentzia Marine Station, where Cancio does his research as well, is part of the European Marine Biological Research Centre (EMBRC) network and was also the hub for research activity during this visit.
The visit demonstrated a strengthening of cross-disciplinary and inter-European research, and Cancio was at the heart of that collaboration. He was also key to making local outreach truly local by ensuring it got communicated in Basque, the native language for this area, and not just Spanish.
We caught up with Cancio to hear more about his thoughts on TREC and his own experiences.
How was your organisation involved with TREC, and what benefits have you already seen?
Here at the marine station, we provide research services in marine biology, including access to marine ecosystems and scientific resources. The five-week TREC visit proved to be very demanding, requiring six months of planning. Because of our expertise, we guided sampling site selection, which also meant helping to obtain permits and licences and providing advice on certain aspects of the Nagoya protocol, which established rules to protect biodiversity in Spain. This can entail things like paying fees, sharing research findings, or collaborating with local organisations. Additionally, we promoted TREC with materials we created, including a new website, and via outreach to Basque and Spanish media. Lastly, we provided important technical and logistical support.
The supersite visit included a political event in Bilbao that included EMBL’s Advanced Mobile Laboratory, the TREC sampling vehicles, and [shown here] the Tara schooner. Traditional music and dancing provided a unique Basque flavour to the event as well. Credit: Massimo Del Prete/EMBL
What outcomes are you most looking forward to from TREC?
We await the biodiversity information from the three land-sea transects that scientists conducted on our coasts and through water column sampling in Plentzia Bay. Additionally, we are very interested in information that may help us spot horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes to marine microbes.
Plentzia Bay provided a beautiful setting for field sampling, but the work often required long days or work at night. Credit: Massimo Del Prete/EMBL
What was a memorable moment from your TREC experiences?
One of the most memorable moments was three nights when we hoped to sample a special kind of marine worm, Platynereis dumerelii, just as it was about to breed. Scientists in EMBL’s Arendt group are interested in Platynereis because the species has adapted to a variety of habitat changes for the past ~500 million years. The species, however, is quite particular about when and how they breed. So here we were – six scientists from Basque, Italy, Germany, and Poland at 23:00 on a new moon night looking for something that several of us weren’t particularly familiar with and under the light of just two lanterns, so we would provide just the right amount of light to create an optimal setting for Platynereis mating.
The light functions as a call to benthic worms to swim to the sea’s surface to mate. We’d selected this particular site because though Platynereis had been catalogued on our coast, they’d never been sampled while mating. So we sat in a slight drizzle for an hour with nothing happening. But then…at 01:00, Eureka! Some males first joined us – but only males. Thirty minutes later, we captured our first fertile female. The shout of success must have been heard in houses near the harbour at that time of night when it was otherwise so silent – especially as we introduced the female to a male in an enclosed container, bearing witness to a truly fantastic nuptial dance.
With scientific, inquisitive eyes, we watched a plumped-up, fertile female swim in increasingly rapid circles until finally – an explosive release of eggs and our own emotional shouts of scientific joy. It was quite a sight – something that had not been successful at many other TREC sampling sites. But here in Spain, we observed three additional love stories like this one, with a total of four new couples meeting up in our waters and developing plenty of wonderful larvae.
A TREC visit can include so many activities. On the left, a colleague from Plentzia shows electron microscopy images of a marine dinoflagellate during an outreach session. The top right photo shows how scientists use liquid nitrogen to rapidly freeze samples, and below that is a microscopic view of plankton that includes a variety of other organisms as well. Credit: Massimo del Prete/EMBL
What makes TREC special and/or important?
For our institution, it’s taken us to the next level. Despite decades of working on marine bioresources at our university, our marine station was only born in 2012, and it wasn’t until we became a Spanish node for EMBRC that we felt we were playing in the ‘Champions League’. With EMBL-TREC, we surfed our way to even deeper waters of biodiversity observation, advanced microscopy, in-cell and molecular biology research with marine model organisms, and new collaborations with a talented multidisciplinary team from the high-level research institutions. Additionally, the accompanying outreach programme introduced our science-centred researchers to the community. Both EMBL and Tara Foundation understood the importance of using Basque materials, not just Spanish and English; 85% of school students here communicate in that language. The experience was wholly wonderful, and I hope it was a way to remind people of the need to safeguard and understand our oceans and planet and encourage the youngest minds to pursue a future in science.
Reaching out to the public to share information about science and their local ecosystems is an important aspect of TREC supersite visits. Credit: Massimo Del Prete/EMBL
Any parting thoughts?
The atmosphere everyone created was excellent and a reminder that collaboration is the way. We made good friends, but also long-term partners. For us, in a national science environment where financial support and technical skill barriers limit what can be pursued, we have a new path to make some of those ideas come true. Specifically, TREC’s mission and sampling strategy marry wonderfully with our own approach to One Health – the concept of interconnectedness between the health of people, animals, plants, and the environment. We aim to observe whether multidrug and antibiotic resistance genes transfer from land and freshwater bacteria to marine ones and whether community diversity, health status of marine fauna and flora, and local socioeconomic factors reflect these genetic events.
