The Marine and Maritime Monitoring Network (RM3): A contribution to the sustainable development of the Macaronesia archipelagos through improvement of their observational capacities.

Laura Cardona Díaz1, Andres Cianca1, Carlos Barrera2, Marimar Villagarcia1, Eduardo Brito de Azevedo3, Rui Caldeira4, Vito Ramos5, Maria Jose Rueda1 and Octavio Llinás6, (1)Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands, Telde, Spain, (2)Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands, Underwater Vehicles, Telde, Spain, (3)University of Azores, Angra do Heroismo, Portugal, (4)ARDITI - Agência Regional para o Desenvolvimento da Investigação Tecnologia e Inovação, Oceanic Observatory of Madeira, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, (5)OCEAN SCIENCE CENTRE MINDELO, Cape Verde, (6)Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands, General Manager, Telde, Spain
Abstract:
The region of Macaronesia is located in the Central East North Atlantic and encompasses over 30 million km2 of territory, and only 0.05% are land areas. Macaronesia is comprised of a continental African coastal area of Morocco and West Sahara and five main archipelagos: three from Portugal (Azores, Madeira and Salvages), one from Spain (Canary Islands) and Cape Verde. Macaronesia has a clear and strategic international interest into all major socio-economic sectors within the marine-maritime fields, such as research, technology, navigation, energy, border security and tourism, among others. However, logistics and support level to develop and maintain an accurate, useful and sustainable monitoring strategy programme is still clearly below the needs.

Based on particular and common initiatives the Marine and Maritime Monitoring Network of the Macaronesia (RM3 from its Spanish acronym) was created in 2004, thanks to a multidisciplinary group of universities, companies and institutions from the three European archipelagos of the Macaronesia and Cape Verde. The goal was the consolidation of a regional ocean observing network for biogeochemical and meteorological observations, with harbour infrastructures as the main sites to install the observational platforms. In addition, the RM3 is the reference framework to gather, manage and show the observations acquired from the in-situ platforms (fix and mobile) like moored buoys, ASV, underwater gliders, meteorological stations and others. The observational program was adapted according to the needs from specific end-users and general public in this area, and following the suggestions of the Global Ocean Observing System.

Here, we present the current RM3 status from different perspectives, e.g. time-series data, used technology, best practices, partnership and engagement, data management, etc. Despite that the technology advances addressing ocean monitoring have significantly improved during last two decades, there are still many unsolved gaps in terms of data quality, reliability, efficiency and sustainability. These gaps become particularly relevant in ocean regions like the Macaronesia, delimited by archipelagos that are located notably distant from each other.

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