PROTECT BALTIC Fourth Annual meeting
PROTECT BALTIC partners gathered in Helsinki on 1–3 September for the project's 2026 Annual Meeting, marking an important point in the project: the completion of its first three-year phase and the beginning of the transition from building the scientific, technical and methodological foundations towards putting them into use.
Over three days, partners took stock of what has been achieved since PROTECT BALTIC began in 2023, shared lessons from the work behind the results, and looked ahead to the analyses, tools and applications that those foundations now make possible.
And there was a lot to take stock of.
Three years ago, much of the work presented at the meeting existed primarily as an ambition: to assemble fragmented information from across the Baltic Sea, improve and harmonise regional data, model marine biodiversity at unprecedented scale and resolution, understand how biodiversity connects with human activities and society, and develop new ways of evaluating, planning and improving marine protection.
At the end of Phase 1, many of those pieces now exist.
Just as importantly, they are beginning to connect.
