ALIENA: final results on Adriatic alien species presented in Trieste
On Monday 9 November 2026, Villa Sartorio in Trieste hosted the closing event of ALIENA (ALIgning Efforts to control Non-indigenous species in the Adriatic sea), the Interreg Italy-Croatia 2021-2027 project protecting Adriatic biodiversity from non-indigenous species. Bluefarm is one of the seven Italian and Croatian partners, as reported by Italy's National System for Environmental Protection (SNPA) and by the daily newspaper Il Gazzettino.
34 months of cross-border cooperation
ALIENA started in March 2024 and runs until December 2026, with a total budget of over €2.6 million. Led by the Apulia Region, the partnership includes Arpa FVG, Arpa Puglia, CMCC, Bluefarm, the Ruđer Bošković Institute and the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries in Split. Together they monitored four pilot areas from the north to the south of the Adriatic and studied five target alien species in detail.
The event was opened by Arpa FVG Director General Anna Lutman and Trieste Deputy Mayor Serena Tonel. Highlights included Arpa FVG's new environmental genetics unit, which uses DNA barcoding and digital PCR to identify species from trace DNA in water and sediments. In the Gulf of Trieste, this confirmed the presence of the crab Pinnotheres bicristatus and tracked the invasive brown alga Rugulopteryx okamurae.
Bluefarm's contribution: forecasting where species spread
Monitoring shows where a species is today; models help predict where it may arrive next. Within ALIENA, Bluefarm worked with CMCC on Lagrangian transport models and agent-based models simulating the growth and dispersal of target species such as the comb jelly Mnemiopsis leidyi (sea walnut) and the potentially toxic microalga Ostreopsis ovata. The models are driven by CMCC's SHYFEM hydrodynamic fields and were applied to case studies in Friuli Venezia Giulia, Apulia and Croatia.
The aim is to give environmental agencies and marine operators a tool to identify the most exposed areas and focus sampling where it matters most. It is one building block of the shared early warning system ALIENA leaves to the Adriatic, combining traditional taxonomy, environmental genetics and predictive modelling.
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ALIENA is co-funded by the European Union under the Interreg VI-A Italy-Croatia 2021-2027 Programme.