ITINERIS' EYES - INTEGRATING, INNOVATING, EVOLVING RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES FOR HEALTHY AND PREDICTED MARINE ECOSYSTEMS

ITINERIS' EYES (InTegrating, INnovating, Evolving Research InfraStructures for hEalthY and prEdicted marine ecosystemS) is an inter-disciplinary research cruise designed to tackle the health of Mediterranean planktonic ecosystems, and improve their predictability, through multi-platform experiments acquiring several Essential Variables (EVs). The approach of ITINERIS’ EYES is to leverage on the technological contribution of 11 European and Italian Research Infrastructures (RIs) operating in the marine, atmospheric and biodiversity domains in the framework of the PNRR ITINERIS - the Italian Integrated Environmental Research Infrastructures System. It is has been conducted on board of the R/V Gaia Blu of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) between July 8th-30th 2025 across the Western Mediterranean Sea. Sampling has been achieved in 27 sampling stations (from surface to bottom), along the ship-track at the sea surface, and through more than 80 autonomous platforms including lagrangian drifters, BioGeoChemical- and Deep- Argo profiling floats.