In 2019 Loro Parque and the Canary Islands Government launched a pioneering public-private research initiative financed with 2 million euros gathering research teams from the University of La Laguna and the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The aim of this network is to establish a data and monitoring network for parameters linked to climate change, ocean acidification, underwater noise pollution and the impact of all these on marine biodiversity in the Macaronesian region. The project has so far installed two oceanographic buoys and has set up a monitoring program based on two VOS (Volunteer observing ship) and complemented with ocean glider campaigns. The project is also focused on the monitoring of marine critically endangered species in the region (butterfly ray and angel shark) as well as those marine species that will be most affected by the global change, like the marine turtles or the temperate ecosystems that will be retrating to cold coastal refuges.
