After successful nomination of participants and the issuance of an order on the establishment of a Steering Committee, the first meeting of REEF project management team and all members of the Steering Committee was held online.

Online meeting was organized on February 24, 2021, with the presence of the management of the Nature Conservation Agency. During the meeting, members of the Steering Committee got an insight into the activities and planned results of the REEF. Each of the partners presented the planned tasks and works to be done in 2021. As it is common in these types of meetings, participants showed most interest and engagement in the discussion segment of the meeting. Members of the Steering Committee used the time allotted for the discussion by finding answers to various questions. For example, it was asked how the project research areas were selected and where exactly the project was located; the answer detailed that the project included areas that had been seen as shallow areas in previous studies, elevation before the Gotland Basin. This is evidenced by both sediment maps and ongoing pilot studies, which show that the research sites selected for the project have stones and a harder substrate, so they have been chosen as sites for more in-depth research. There was also a question about the areas of potential hydrocarbon licence areas and wind farm areas and their overlap with project research sites. The answer detailed that the results obtained during the project research will in some way facilitate future debate and decisions, since underwater species and habitats data will be available. During the discussions, the importance of underwater cultural heritage and the need for data exchange was also addressed, recommending the study of habitats and groups of organisms inhabiting metal shipwrecks. The project team confirmed that it would be happy to collaborate on cultural heritage research and data exchange.

After two hours of discussions, the first meeting of the Steering Committee was closed in a positive atmosphere. The next Steering Committee meeting is scheduled for early 2022, when it will be possible to present the results of the first works and discuss further implementation of the project.