Welcome to the BiodivOcean project!

Welcome to the website of the new BiodivOcean project! The BiodivOcean project is funded by the European funding programme Erasmus+. The project aims to foster ocean literacy and awareness of marine biodiversity through innovative education and citizen science. It aims to highlight the importance of marine biodiversity and the threats it faces—such as invasive species and microplastics—within the educational community, by co-creating educational resources and communication strategies.

The methodology we use in BiodivOcean is based on the VIRTUE method, which has been developed over many years.
In fact, the development of the VIRTUE method began almost 30 years ago.
VIRTUE (an acronym for VIRTual University Education) was established in 1997 as a joint research and educational project by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, USA, the Centre for Science Education at the University of Bergen, Norway and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

The research part of the project was completed in 2002 but the educational component continued between Sweden and the USA and has been further developed.

VIRTUE is since 2021 managed by the Gothenburg Marine Laboratory.
In 2024, a consortium was created with partners from Sweden, Norway, Spain and the USA to seek funding to further develop the VIRTUE methodology through a new project.
Funding was sought from the European funding program Erasmus+, which granted funding for the proposed BiodivOcean project.

The partners in the BiodivOcean project are the University of Gothenburg and the Gothenburg Marine Biology Laboratory from Gothenburg in Sweden, SALT Lofoten AS from Tromsö in Norway, SUBMON from Barcelona in Spain and Georgetown University and the University of Maryland in the USA.

The BiodivOcean project runs from 2025 to 2027 and you can follow the project's development on the project website.