The aquaculture farm managers, together with the local scuba diving center Blue Planet, are convinced that if they work together they can strengthen the synergies among the two activities, transforming the fish farm into yet one more touristic asset for the area. Thus, together with Wings ICT solutions, they joined UNITED to prove that multi-use can benefit the community as a whole, by bringing more tourists to the area.

The plan is simple: the Kastelorizo aquaculture farm will be included in scuba diving tours organized by Planet Blue dive center. The farm could provide scuba diving tours with a unique natural beauty scene: the food given to the farmed fish attracts many wild fish, which are thus abundant in the area. In turn, Planet Blue activities will benefit the farm: the diving center, which also carries out marine surveillance activities and owns remote operating vehicles (ROVs) for taking videos of disaster sites, could use their skill and equipment to facilitate the aquaculture activities. In UNITED, certain ROVs will be used in the farm for infrastructure inspection and other activities. Wings ICT will provide the necessary IT support to operations, by creating a platform that will schedule co-activity work, provide better management of the farm and monitor key parameters that ensure environmental conditions and aquaculture production is not disturbed.

The ultimate aim is not only to prove that these activities can actually be combined, but also to demonstrate the benefits of multi-use for the area as a whole. As part of UNITED activities, interviews and workshops will be held in the area. This way, local stakeholders will be engaged to identify strategies to fully reap the benefits in terms of increased tourism – and to explore additional ways to gain added benefits, for example through partnerships between the farm and local restaurants. The UNITED team believes that, at the end of the project, local people will look at the site with completely different eyes.