EMBRC-ERIC, or the European Marine Biological Resource

Centre, is a distributed European Research Infrastructure

Cluster, which provides and supports large scale and high

quality marine science in Europe. It was established to bring

together the distributed infrastructures and HR in European

marine research groups to answer Europe's challenges

related to food, health and global change. With 9 members

(Belgium, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Norway, Portugal,

Spain and the UK), this ERIC offers access to a portfolio of

research platforms, biological resources, analytical services,

training, expert advice and data, to users from academia to

industry. For Belgium, 5 Operators are involved: 4 Flemish

(UGent, VLIZ, KU Leuven and UHasselt) and 1 federal

(RBINS). With this proposal, the Flemish partners aim at

delivering top-level services and to coordinate and expand

the training component for EMBRC. By participating in

EMBRC, Flanders will be on the front stage of the Blue

Growth scenario, with fundamental and applied research

and education activities in sustainable aquaculture,

exploitation of living resources, blue biotechnology,

ecosystem health and marine management.