Within 4 pilot sites across the Mediterranean Sardinia (Italy), Monfalcone (Italy), Crete (Greece), and Minorca (Spain), the ARTEMIS project partners bring back life to seagrass meadows as it focuses on developing innovative techniques and collaborative strategies to protect these invaluable habitats.
In Sardinia, the project is being conducted in the Marine Protected Area (MPA) of Capo Testa Punta Falcone, located at the northernmost tip of the island. This MPA, renowned for its rich biodiversity and commitment to conservation, serves as a model for sustainable marine ecosystem management. The ARTEMIS team has already begun essential work, including comprehensive data collection, biodiversity assessments.

Francesca Frau | Marine Biologist – MEDSEA Foundation
It was three days of intense work, but we are very satisfied with the result. We have collected all the data expected for the first phase of the ARTEMIS Project, an important quantity of information which will also give us an image of the state of conservation in which the Posidonia oceanica prairie is found in this quadrant of the Mediterranean.
Francesca Frau, marine biologist and head of the ARTEMIS project at MEDSEA
”We will be able to evaluate some of the ecosystem services that this precious habitat offers”, explains Frau.
Three days of diving in the seabed of the Capo Testa Punta Falcone Marine Protected Area, placed in the extreme north of Sardinia and touched in the last ten days of October by the hot, sultry south-east wind, definitely anomalous in its insistence and protagonist of an autumn that struggles to stand out from the summer.
The data collected by the MEDSEA team of experts will be used to calculate two main indices, one of quality and biodiversity EBQI (Ecosystem-based Quality Index) and one on bluecarbon, based on the quantity of carbon (both organic and inorganic) stored in the substrate built up by Posidonia oceanica, called “matte”.
The information obtained thanks to the observation and subsequent laboratory examination on the collected samples, conducted in parallel on highly conserved prairie and degraded areas, will be fundamental for the second phase of the ARTEMIS Project, focused on the evaluation of the ecosystem services offered by the prairies of posidonia.
The pilot sites identified by the project for restoring Posidonia oceanica seagrass are, in addition to Sardinia, Crete in Greece and Minorca in Spain. As part of the ARTEMIS project, Monfalcone, Italy, focuses on Cymodocea nodosa analysis to assess ecosystem health and resilience.

ARTEMIS team for the Sardinian Pilot site Capo Testa Punta Falcone in October 2024

Michela Congiu | Junior research assistant MEDSEA Foundation
“The area chosen for monitoring is between 5 and 20 meters deep. Here, we conducted sampling and collected data on how much life moves in this stretch of sea”, says Michela Congiu, Junior research assistant of the MEDSEA Foundation.
Among the many elements that contribute to the calculation of the EBQI index, which is the object of monitoring, there are: the observation of the fish species (visual census), the presence of Pinna nobilis, sea urchins and other filter-feeding organisms (benthic component), and the counts and analysis of leaf bundles (lepidochronology).
Laboratory analyses also involve matte samples that will give an indication on the presence of macrozoobenthos, the very small animal organisms that populate the substrate created by posidonia. The data will be ready by January 2025 and the monitoring will be repeated in a year and a half.
Sampling for carbon analysis was also successfully completed. Special corers, made specifically for operations in Sardinia, have extracted a sample of matte sediment which will be examined at different intervals along the stratification, detecting organic and inorganic carbon, quantity and dating. The results of the analyses will be ready in few months.
According to now consolidated studies, at least 30% of the prairies that once framed the Mediterranean basin have degraded and/or disappeared. A serious loss: species such as posidonia are not only a huge green lung (posidonia is capable of producing up to 20 liters of oxygen per square meter per day), but they constitute a natural barrier capable of mitigating the effects of coastal erosion and floods. Their role in safeguarding an extraordinary treasure of biodiversity is fundamental. There are numerous species that live around the system guaranteed by the prairies. Even in the Capo Testa Punta Falcone MPA, despite the excellent general state of conservation, there are fragmented areas, which bear marks left for example by the dragging of anchors. For this reason, the MEDSEA team will soon proceed with the planting of over 2000 cuttings in these degraded areas, which will then be monitored over time to evaluate the success of the intervention.
Thanks to the ARTEMIS project, in this pilot site a total of two hectares of prairie will be restored, working on an area of approximately 200 m2.

Yuri Donno | Marine Biologist – MPA Capo Testa Punta Falcone
“Capo Testa Punta Falcone has long been committed to finding new ways of conservation. The ARTEMIS Project, in which we are happy to participate as a partner of MEDSEA, is a very important first step towards a sustainability path that will be long”, explains Yuri Donno, director of the MPA.
“Data collection and reforestation, monitoring and quantifying the value that grasslands provide to coastal communities is a very powerful message. We will follow this with other actions and projects, starting with that of buoy fields, aimed at preventing boaters’ anchors from tracing furrows that erase centuries of slow, natural work. Certainly a great challenge for our future and that of the entire Mediterranean”, concludes director Donno.