Why extreme marine environments?
Extreme marine ecosystems remain among the least explored habitats on Earth.
NEXTMARINE investigates how sustainable, low-impact exploration can advance marine biodiversity knowledge while enabling sustainable innovation
NEXTMARINE is a 48-month Horizon Europe project
12
partners
9
countries
2
Expeditions
Next-generation sampling techniques
Low-impact field methods
Extreme environment sampling
Aegean & Baltic expeditions
Metagenomics analysis & Enzyme identification
DNA amplification + analytics
Intensification
Scale-up for applications
Food Industry
Functional ingredients and bio-based compounds.
Oligosaccharides as antimicrobial agents
Targeted molecules with application potential.
Molecules for drug discovery
Screening and functionalization for innovation.
Scientific And Technological Approach
NEXTMARINE partners develop integrated approaches that reduce environmental impact while maximizing scientific and industrial value, combining field innovation, AI-supported analysis, advanced molecular methods and enzyme discovery pipelines.
Novel Imaging And Seabed Mapping
Underwater hyperspectral imaging on ROVs enables precise seabed mapping and better targeting of sampling sites while reducing unnecessary disturbance.
AI And Machine-Learning For Less Invasive Sampling
AI and machine-learning-based analysis supports field decisions and helps guide more targeted, efficient and less invasive sampling campaigns.
Innovative DNA Amplification
Advanced DNA amplification and metagenomic pipelines improve recovery of biological signals from low-biomass and challenging samples.
New Enzymes
Enzyme discovery, characterization, engineering and scale-up bridge fundamental research and real-world industrial applications.
Workpackages
NEXTMARINE is coordinated through 7 interconnected workpackages, each driving a key stage of the project's scientific and operational pipeline.
Expeditions of the project
To achieve its scientific goals, NEXTMARINE conducts two complementary expeditions—one in the Aegean and one in the Baltic—because each environment hosts distinct extreme conditions and unique microbial communities, offering different opportunities for discovery and innovation.
Aegean Sea Expedition
The NEXTMARINE team travels to the hydrothermal vents of the Aegean Sea, one of Europe’s most extreme underwater environments, to carry out early‑stage exploration and sampling. These vents host unique extremophiles with promising biotechnological potential, making them a key site for advancing the project’s scientific goals. Using AI‑driven tools, novel mapping systems, and remotely operated vehicles, partners from across Europe conduct coordinated fieldwork to collect high‑value samples while minimizing environmental impact.
Baltic Sea Expedition
In the Baltic Sea, NEXTMARINE focuses on anoxic zones and legacy ammunition dump sites, areas that provide access to another set of remarkable extremophilic microorganisms. These expeditions combine innovative robotic sensing, hyperspectral imaging, and large‑scale biodiversity assessment, enabling precise sampling in challenging conditions. The goal is to uncover new enzymes and better understand how life persists in low‑oxygen environments—insights essential for scientific discovery and future green industrial applications.
Objectives
At NEXTMARINE, our work spans a wide spectrum of interconnected fields, reflecting the project’s ambition to push the boundaries of marine science and innovation. From exploring extreme ocean environments to developing cutting‑edge sensing and mapping technologies, and from unlocking novel biotechnological resources to strengthening sustainable industrial applications, our objectives reflect the diverse expertise of the consortium and the complexity of the ecosystems we study. Together, they form a coherent roadmap that drives pioneering research while supporting Europe’s move toward a circular, responsible, and biodiversity‑aware blue economy
Develop sustainable technologies for mapping and sampling extreme marine environments
Explore and characterize two extreme ecosystems in the Aegean and Baltic Seas
Identify and engineer novel enzymes with unique catalytic profiles
Demonstrate applications in food, pharmaceuticals, and biomaterials
Ensure ethical, legal, and open science compliance, including ABS and GDPR
Maximize impact through dissemination, exploitation, and stakeholder engagement to ensure the pick-up of results
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