Fano, May 29, 2026 — The Fano Marine Center Auditorium hosted the fourth edition of Adriatic Conservancy, an initiative promoted by Fano University of the Sea as part of the European ASPEH (Adriatic Species and Habitats of Coastal Areas) project, funded by the Italy-Croatia Cross-Border Cooperation Program. It was an intense morning, packed with data, stories, and visions of the future of our sea.
A growing project
Gianfranco Rossi, scientific director of Fano University of the Sea, opened the proceedings with news that will change the scale of the initiative: Adriatic Conservancy is a project with great ambitions, including making the leap from a local to a multicontinental scale, demonstrating the value and credibility it has built over the years.
Loretta Manocchi, Councilor for the Environment of the Municipality of Fano, introduced the proceedings by emphasizing the importance of raising environmental awareness and making a direct appeal to young people: adopting responsible behavior today is a civic choice, even before it is an ecological one.
More than 500 students in the field
Over the past twelve months, over 500 high school students from Pesaro, Fano, Senigallia, Civitanova Marche, and Gubbio have participated in the project. They weren’t just spectators: they were researchers in the field, using scientific protocols, monitoring apps, and real data.
Good news about the health of the Metauro River comes from analyses conducted by students of G.A.R.A., a new program at Polo3 in Fano that trains specialists in water resource protection and ecological redevelopment. The student “water guardians,” so called after the protocol used, surveyed three key analysis points for the second year in a row: the Metauro River, its mouth, and the Adriatic Sea opposite, at three different times of the year. The result is a positive assessment because analyses of turbidity, pH, salinity, nitrates, phosphates, and temperature showed no significant changes compared to previous studies. “The analyzed waters are in good health,” the students working on the Adriatic Conservancy project exulted at the conclusion of their presentation.
Students from Enrico Medi High School in Senigallia shared their beach sampling experience using the iNaturalist and CleanSwell apps: over 800 meters of coastline, a group of five students collected 156 objects, 75% of which were plastic (caps, bottles) and 20% abandoned fishing gear. They used the MAC-Emerso protocol, the same one adopted by professional researchers.
Even more impressive was the data from the Mazzatinti High School in Gubbio: over just 0.6 kilometers of beach in Fosso Sejore, Fano, a strategic coastal area for assessing the human impact and health of the Adriatic ecosystem, the students collected 995 objects for a total of 180 kg of waste, mostly plastic and polystyrene. Numbers that say much more than any slide. The CleanSwell app was used to catalog the types and quantities of waste and the iNaturalist app was used to upload images.
Students from classes 2N and 2O at the Leonardo da Vinci High School in Civitanova Marche, led by teachers Nadia Campanari and Donatella Venturi, participated in the Adriatic Conservancy 2026 project with research conducted at the Sentina Nature Reserve, a 177-hectare protected area at the mouth of the Tronto River, one of the last Adriatic wetlands, with over 450 plant species and 140 migratory bird species. On May 7, together with an Erasmus+ delegation of 13 French students from Brittany, they conducted a cleanup on the reserve’s beach, cataloging the waste with the CleanSwell app and monitoring biodiversity with the MAC-Emerso protocol and the iNaturalist app. The most significant finding concerns mussel farming nets, which account for 80% of the waste. Among the other waste found were syringes, medication bottles, and car tires, likely transported by the nearby Tronto River: confirmation of how road and river pollution inevitably ends up in the sea.
The G. Marconi High School in Pesaro conducted a monitoring project on the Fiorenzuola di Focara beach as part of its marine biology and ecology supplementary course. The outings took place on April 11th and 17th, involving all students in the course. Three protocols were applied: MAC Emerso (50×50 cm squares on the accumulation strip), iNaturalist, and CleanSwell. The beach, located within the San Bartolo Park, is free of concessions and maintains a good level of naturalness.
The most abundant material found was plant-based, particularly wood and algal remains, while mollusks and crustaceans predominated among the fauna. This year, a sea urchin was sighted for the first time, and a loggerhead sea turtle, a rare and protected species, was documented. Seagrasses, a protected habitat, were again detected, albeit in reduced quantities.
iNaturalist identified 20 different species, while CleanSwell collected 5,485 pieces of waste in 2026, up from 4,879 in 2025 and 2,539 in 2024. The main source of pollution is fishing (nets, polystyrene), followed by tourist waste.
Science: Four Windows on the Changing Sea
The Sea Is Warming Up—And the Consequences Are Already Here
Torcuato Pulido Mantas of the Polytechnic University of Marche presented the phenomenon of Marine Heat Waves, increasingly intense and frequent marine heat waves. In 2024, a temperature of 31°C was recorded at a depth of 8-9 meters in Ancona: a figure that until a few years ago would have seemed impossible. These events cause mass die-offs of organisms such as gorgonians, sponges, and bivalves, and favor the expansion of alien and invasive species—from the Rapana venosa to the lionfish—with profound effects on ecosystems and Adriatic fisheries.
Contaminants We Don’t See
Professor Maura Benedetti opened a window on a less visible but equally serious threat: emerging contaminants. In 2025, seven of the nine planetary boundaries were exceeded, including that for new chemical compounds. Microplastics, pharmaceuticals, and perfluoroalkyl substances are spreading in low but dangerous concentrations throughout aquatic ecosystems. The good news: research is turning these threats into opportunities, with projects like Solding that convert plastic into energy and biosensors capable of detecting contaminants in real time.
The Journey of Water
Anna Annibaldi, a researcher at the Fano Marine Center and professor at the Polytechnic University of Marche, led the audience on a “journey of water” that begins with our daily consumption—fashion, technology, raw materials—and ends in the sea, demonstrating how every choice on land has marine consequences. She highlighted often overlooked emerging risks, such as nanoparticles, and the hidden environmental impact of perceived “green” products, including electric cars. The sustainability model from which to draw inspiration? Space missions, where the complete reuse of resources is not a choice, but a necessity.
Guardians of the Waters: Citizens as Research Tools
Sara Cerri of Fano University of the Sea presented the citizen science project “Guardians of the Waters”: students and citizens who seasonally monitor water quality—temperature, pH, salinity, nitrates, phosphates, turbidity—along the river-mouth-sea continuum, with sampling already active at three points along the Metauro River mouth. The data, collected with simple kits and, in the future, with dedicated smartphone apps, flows into an open data web platform developed by Gianluca Mei. Born in Fano with the 2K class of the IIS Polo3 (GARA major), the project aims to expand in Italy and abroad.
The Lectio Magistralis: Science as an Orchestra
The morning concluded with a lecture by Professor Ferdinando Boero, one of the world’s leading experts in marine biology, that touched on issues far broader than biology. Science, he explained, resembles an orchestra: understanding the world emerges from the synthesis of many small notes played by different disciplines. The ocean—which constitutes over 90% of the planet’s living space—follows ecological laws of balance and limits that the human economy, founded on infinite growth, tends to ignore. A clear warning: economic capital cannot expand by eroding natural capital without irreversible consequences.
What Remains
The conference concluded with a weighty figure: in the Marche region, coastal land use is almost double the national average. Faced with the European “30×30” goal—protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030—much remains to be done.
The proposals that emerged are concrete: information campaigns, explanatory signs on beaches, involvement of elementary and middle schools, preservation of stretches of coastline in their natural state. And above all: bringing the topic of marine pollution into the classrooms of inland schools, because the sea is a global problem, not just for those who live nearby.
Adriatic Conservancy 2026 — next stop: the world.
