Sea-turtles a’plenty
July 20, 2025
Research Fund 25/08 :: Beatriz Cunha
August 15, 2025
What a pleasure it was to welcome our DGPM friends in Peniche last week! They came to see the half-million euros Mobile Station they helped finance through the EEA Grants, which they knew as “Project 011” until one week ago, when they were able to actually walk inside and see with their own eyes where did all our efforts go during these last 5,5 years.
It’s hard to believe that our Azorean boss, Rui Guedes, was sharing his early Google Sketchup diagrams with us as we flew to the Regional Aquatics Workshop in Columbus, back in May 2019. From those we evolved to Auto Cad, then Inventor, and then… the drawings became real first in Coimbra, then Cantanhede, and finally in Peniche.
But they certainly didn’t stop there, and we took them all the way to Al Hoceima in the beginning of June, and then to Stockholm in the end of June. That’s right, our Mobile Station drove fish over 10.000 km in its first month and, while we moved well over 1.000 animals, we sadly lost… 3, after they arrived to their spectacular new home.
That is definitely one aspect of this business we will never get used to, and that is the simple truth that, sometimes, sh#t happens. The good news is that this new piece of brilliant equipment will help us minimize those unfortunate moments to the absolute minimum.
Proof of that is the Mobile Station’s very first weekend, May 30 until June 1st in Seville, where the team experienced… 47 degrees Celsius! And guess what the water temperature was throughout the whole stay in Seville? A very comfortable 18 degrees, which means the animals weren’t even aware of the blaze scorching all the staff outside the container.
Anyway, we’re very thankful to DGPM for their visit, but mostly for their unwavering support over these last 5,5 years. We literally couldn’t have done this without you, and we look forward to submitting another (crazier!) proposal and working with your splendid staff again!
#letsdothis!
#EEAGrants #EEAGrantsPT #EEANorwayGrants #CrescimentoAzul #BlueGrowth #DGPM
PS – Thank you for the lovely pics!
