On Friday May 27th 2016, a telemetry workshop was organized by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) and Vemco. During this workshop the European Telemetry Network (ETN) and the telemetry database (developed and hosted by VLIZ in the framework of LifeWatch) were presented. Furthermore, a representative of Vemco (Stephanie Smedbol) taught the principles of acoustic telemetry, and then went into some more detail about study design, data management and data analysis.

To close off the AquaRES project, a meeting with the follow-up committee was linked to a short user workshop, where the latest developments and achievements of the project were highlighted. To avoid that the collaborations which started during the project would come to an end, a Memorandum of Understanding will be compiled between the project partners RBINS and VLIZ. Through this MoU, the spirit of AquaRES can be continued, which will be beneficial both for the project partners and the involved taxonomic editors.

From August 29th to 31rd 2016, a LifeWatch Jerico-Next Flow Cytometry Data Analysis Workshop was organized at VLIZ, in cooperation with Rijkswaterstaat, CNRS-LOG, UGent and CEFAS. The goal of this workshop was to analyze the data from the joint LifeWatch cruises in April, May and June 2016.

A group of Antarctic taxonomic experts from around the globe came together to discuss expansion of the scope of the very successful register of Antarctic Marine Species (RAMS) into all realms, including, marine, freshwater, terrestrial etc. It was decided that a new portal will be created - called RAS - where people can retrieve taxonomic information on all Antarctic Species. This workshop was the onset for the future development and population of the Register.