The Challenge of Marine Bioinvasions in the East Ionian Sea
The introduction and spread of marine Non-Indigenous Species (NIS) pose severe threats to biodiversity, ecosystem services, and local coastal economies. Despite the high risks associated with maritime traffic, the East Ionian Sea remains poorly documented regarding marine NIS, with fragmented, scarce, and heavily limited information—especially concerning localized vectors like ports and marinas.
The Current Methodological Gap
To date, previous and ongoing efforts to monitor or document marine NIS in Greece have suffered from a lack of harmonization. Agencies and researchers have relied on highly heterogeneous, non-standardised methods, including:
- Ad hoc individual field records.
- Opportunistic observations from citizen scientists (public data).
- Diver-based subjective surveys in marinas and ports.
- Uncoordinated deployments of ARMS arrays and other localized approaches.
Because these activities do not follow a unified or standardized protocol, their results are notoriously difficult to compare across space and time. Furthermore, conventional monitoring remains exceptionally costly and labour-intensive, creating substantial time lags between fieldwork sample collection, expert taxonomic identification, data processing, and final publication.
Why INVASIONS is Needed
There is an urgent, critical need for a simple, rapid, practical, and scientifically robust NIS monitoring protocol. INVASIONS bridges this gap by designing a framework that:
- Standardizes Data: Captures the outcomes of NIS checks in an entirely comparable format.
- Identifies High-Risk Zones: Highlights vulnerable hotspots for NIS introduction and secondary spread.
- Acts as an Early-Warning System: Rapidly flags suspect or newly arriving species before they establish permanent populations and expand across the region.
