Services

Located on the southwestern edge of Ría de Vigo, Toralla Island, ECIMAT enjoys a strategic position within the Northwestern Iberia upwelling system. This setting provides direct access to a diverse range of coastal ecosystems, including rocky and sandy intertidal zones, mudflats, pristine coastal areas, estuaries, and seagrass maerl beds. This privileged location offers researchers a unique opportunity to study and explore various marine habitats and their ecosystems in one consolidated area.

ECIMAT is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities for conducting research on seawater and marine cultures, ranging from experimental to pilot scale. The station comprises three floors of modular, f lexible, and functional buildings, housing a variety of laboratories and specialized rooms. These include research laboratories, service laboratories (both wet and dry), temperature-controlled rooms, freezing rooms, and auxiliary cultures for phytoplankton and zooplankton.

The laboratories are outfitted with top-quality air, oxygen, freshwater, and tap water lines, available at three different temperatures and varying levels of filtration and sterilization. This ensures that researchers have access to precisely controlled environmental conditions essential for their experiments and studies.

ECIMAT offers advanced facilities and specialized services for marine science research. This includes dedicated laboratories for aquaculture and global change studies, offshore and floating mesocosm facilities for experiments, technological platforms for marine environment research, provision of marine biological resources and model organism culturing, access to coastal ecosystems via small boats and a 20 m research vessel up to the continental shelf edge, real-time oceanographic data support, and processing and analysis services for water samples, sediments, and marine organisms.

The ECIMAT´s service offer is complemented by the know-how and research expertise provided by the UVIGO´s researchers that belong to the CIM, which for this project will offer also services such as:

• Tools for marine contamination monitoring;

• Omics technologies for the early detection of bivalve larvae diseases,

• Taxonomical profiling of bacterial communities in microalgae and bivalve culturing systems,

• Marine microbiomes, bioprospecting of new products and enzymes;

• Study of the biology and ecology of cephalopods;

• Cryopreservation- conservation of parental lines for aquaculture selective breeding;

• Integral assessment of feeding, environmental of culture conditions;

• And parasites diseases, detection and control in fisheries and aquaculture.

Bioresources available

ECIMAT has a small biobank of marine organisms as well as expertise for applying and developing cryopreservation protocols for the biobanking of Marine Biological Resources.

Additionally, ECIMAT offers aquaria and tanks for the rearing of many type of marine organisms such as: equinoderms (sea urchin is cultured all around the year), Aurita aurelia, sea cucumber, octopus, different species of fishes (Sea bass, Sea bream) and shellfish (mussels, clams, flat oyster…) and has facilities and equipment to culture microalgae and zooplankton to feed these organisms.

Finally, ECIMAT facilities and expertise are able to rear the following model organisms: Sea urchin, Cyprinodon variegatus, Gasterosteus aculeatus and Rainbow Trout.

Support offered

The facilities have extensive experience in providing access to external users. Before the arrival, administrative support will assist with reservations and travel arrangements. During the trans-national access, administrative, technical and scientific personnel will be assigned to the users to support them in their research activities if necessary, and the scientific expertise of the installations will be at their disposal, being the users fully integrated in the daily scientific activities of the facilities. Training in the use of the platforms and equipment will be provided. No lodging will be provided in the installations. In-house kitchen facilities are available and apartments for rent and hotels will be accessible via public transport. Users will be expected to provide a seminar and a report of the visit.

Modality of access

Access to ECIMAT-UVIGO will be provided on the basis of unit costs (person-day) or as actual costs for some specific services, depending on the service. The degree of independence of the user during their work will depend on the research planned and will be possible within the access scheme proposed.