1. Overview.
Since 2010, Menkab boat is carrying many researchers, biologist and videomakers to perform studies on the different cetaceans species of Mediterranean Sea that live and visit regularly the Ligurian Sea. Our challenge is to lead a scientific research to fill the gap knowledge that still exist about all species and perform educational activities in order to evoke people awareness on the anthropogenic threats that top predators as cetacean and all marine life are facing. Furthermore, thanks to the heterogeneity of the team (composed of biologists and oceanographers, communication advisors, photographers, videomakers from Artescienza s.a.s.) we aim to increase our video production with: documentaries focused on marine life of Ligurian Sea and educational video to explain the potential environmental risks

2. Contest and objectives
Cetaceans as top predators play a fundamental role in the balance of oceanic ecosystems. These species are also considered as strong indicator of god health of seas and oceans. Rhese species represent also some flag species in our biodiversity richness. For this reason, our role is strongly focused on protecting them and monitoring them in order to assess good status of marine ecosystems. Several cetaceans species among the Mediterranean are classified as Endangered according to ACCOBAMS and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN List of Threatened Species). These populations are threatened by a number of impacts which can cause direct mortality (i.e. ship strikes, illegal drift nets, plastic pollution) or stranding (i.e. strong acoustic impacts), habitat alteration, prey reduction and pollution (including chemical pollution and debris ingestion). However, our knowledge on species (i.e. sperm whales or fin whales) is still inadequate for proposing effective conservation strategies.
The main goals of improving people awareness on threats facing by these species and all scientific assessments to be presented and shared among scientific community and International agencies will be achieved through the following objectives.

2.1 Educational objectives:
- scientific dissemination activities for citizen as well as scientific training activities;
- creation and production of multimedia content to be shared with the community

2.2 Scientific objectives:
- Populations genomics research to identify the units of conservation for Mediterranean sperm whale and, consequently, describe the demographics,
kin associations and geographic population structure;
- building a map of sperm whale gne flow, in order to assess priority sites (essential breeding and feeding habitat), and to migration behaviour among
the Mediterranean basin and between Mediterranean and Atlantic ocean.

3. Methodology.
- Survey at sea for data collection (position, photos, acoustic) for scientific assessment and multimedia contents production (aerial and underwater)
for documentaries and scientific dissemination.
- Data analyses for scientific production. GPS data and photos will be analysed in order to perform distribution assessment and improving photo ID
catalogues.
- Population genetic on sperm whale. About 180 samples from Mediterranean and close areas in Atlantic ocean will be genotyped in order to clarify
te gene flow in the whole basin, assess the kinship between different area and confirm or decline lhypothese of isolate units that could risk
extinction.