From the regatta to the seabed: a week with boaters at the Barcolana 58
14/10/2026
Every time an anchor drops onto a seagrass meadow, a piece of our sea is torn away.
Meadows of marine phanerogams grow slowly, yet they shelter fish and invertebrates, protect the coast from erosion and store carbon, and a single careless anchoring can undo years of growth. Protecting them depends less on rules than on the everyday choices of the people who go to sea. That is why BIOPRESSADRIA chose the Barcolana 58 as the stage for one of its key communication events, organised by the lead partner, the Municipality of Monfalcone. Every year the regatta brings thousands of sailors, skippers and sea lovers to Trieste, which made it the ideal place to reach the recreational boaters whose habits matter most for the seabed.
The week began in Monfalcone, where on Thursday 8 October the project partners gathered for a project meeting and the Steering Committee meeting. Alongside the lead partner, the Croatian NGO Sunce, Kornati National Park and the Public Institution for the Management of Protected Areas of Dubrovnik-Neretva County attended in person, together with the Italian partners SELC and CORILA. The Marine Protected Area of Porto Cesareo and Sea & Karst joined online. The next day, Friday 9 October, the Municipality of Monfalcone officially opened its institutional stand on the Rive of Trieste, facing Piazza Unità d'Italia, in front of the public and the project partners. Mayor Luca Fasan, MEP Anna Maria Cisint and other authorities attended the ceremony, which also marked Monfalcone's tenth consecutive participation in the Barcolana. "We proudly celebrate our tenth consecutive year at the Barcolana, an extraordinary showcase for a sector that is fundamental to our city's identity and economy," said Mayor Fasan.
BIOPRESSADRIA's message to boaters is practical. Across five pilot sites in Italy and Croatia, the project has promoted eco-mooring buoy fields, which let boats stop safely without dragging anchors over the seabed. These buoy fields protect the seagrass meadows that make these marine and coastal habitats so valuable. The goal is to make mooring on a buoy, or choosing a suitable seabed, a natural habit for anyone who goes to sea. To help make this happen, the afternoon of 9 October was dedicated to the BIOPRESSADRIA APP, presented together with the project's digital platform for sharing cartographic data. The app is free for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets and brings the project's WebGIS maps on board. When a boat approaches a sensitive area, the app sends a visual and audible alert and points to the nearest eco-mooring buoy field or suitable seabed. Each pilot site has a fact sheet with local rules and data on the condition of the meadows. The app is designed mainly for recreational boaters, but it is also useful for nautical and tourism operators, managing authorities, schools and citizens, and it requires no registration, only GPS and location permission.
For the whole Barcolana week, from 7 to 11 October, the stand kept BIOPRESSADRIA's information material available to visitors. It also displayed three information panels and the videos of the pilot actions, giving the public a direct look at what protecting the Adriatic's seabed means in practice. Many visitors were boaters themselves, exactly the audience a project about changing behaviour at sea needs to reach.
