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Grand Final for the Costa Smeralda Prize, promoted by the Costa Smeralda Consortium in collaboration with the MEDSEA Foundation. The objective is to enhance the literature of the sea, promote research, projects and patents, aimed at the protection of coastal and marine resources, and raising awareness of the populations of Mediterranean countries on the value of marine ecosystems and coastal. Saturday, April 27, at the Sala Smeralda of the Cervo Tennis Club of Porto Cervo, at 16:30, will take place the award ceremony, with free admission. For the Blue Innovation category, coordinated by the MEDSEA Foundation, the prize will be awarded to Seabin - by LifeGate PlasticLess, the project of the waste bin for the sea that can also collect microplastics, selected among the 12 most innovative projects that have reached the final rush. The motivation of the jury, composed of Alberto Luca Recchi, Simone Perotti, Roberto Cotroneo and Francesca Santoro: "With Seabin, a sea-cleaning project, we see the possibilities that conception and technology, if applied to the greatest planetary emergency, offer for the protection of the sea, starting from the symbolic and real center of nautical life: the ports". The President of the MEDSEA Foundation, Alessio Satta, underlines the extraordinary participation in the 'Blue Innovation' section of the Costa Smeralda Award: "There are many ideas, researches and projects presented this year: among these we have selected twelve based on originality and the real impact on the protection of marine-coastal ecosystems. The dominant theme is that of solutions for the pollution of plastic at sea and the reduction of discharges from motor navigation, but there is also talk of cork surfboards, fishing with low environmental impact and innovative projects for environmental education.

The guest of honour of the 2019 edition of the Prize, the scientific divulger Piero Angela, emphasizes the need to defuse threats to marine ecosystems: "In every drop of the sea there is our past and our future. Billions of years ago, these drops crossed the cosmos imprisoned in asteroids and comets. Then they were the incubators of life. Today the sea, which provides much of the oxygen we breathe, is the largest living museum of wonderful forms and the largest archaeological museum, full of precious objects, art treasures, statues and masterpieces. But the sea is also a great regulator of the climate, a giant pot that is warming up. If we do not decrease the increase in the temperature of the atmosphere, the sea can be the cause of epochal cataclysms (...) Any initiative that brings it to the centre of our attention offers a precious cue for our reflection and a help to our future.

The Costa Smeralda Prize goes in this direction, promoting thought and action to enhance and protect the sea. The event involved schools in the projects of collective mobilization of the territory, promoted by the Consortium Costa Smeralda with the collaboration of MEDSEA. On March 28th the second edition of Adotta una spiaggia (Adopt a beach) was celebrated: 130 students from the first grade secondary schools of the municipality of Arzachena committed themselves personally to the reclamation of the beaches, in the wake of the various awareness clean-ups promoted by the MEDSEA Foundation and aimed at increasing awareness of environmental issues. Those same students, to whom we will hand over the future, are also the protagonists of the literary contest Un mare da leggere (A sea to be read), always born within the initiatives of collective mobilization of the territory promoted by the Costa Smeralda Award, focused on the same theme of the main prize on which it converges. The journalist Stefano Salis, an authoritative cultural name, will decree the most convincing and evocative composition, with the sea as the protagonist, among those elaborated by the 125 students of the middle schools of the first level secondary schools of the municipality of Arzachena. The winning student will be awarded the Special Mention Costa Smeralda Prize 2019 during the ceremony. The literary prizes will be awarded to Ian McGuire with Le Acque del Nord (Einaudi) for fiction, Mimmo Nunnari with Destino Mediterraneo (Rubbettino) for non-fiction, Special Mention to Ida Castiglioni, extraordinary woman, sea writer and sailor incomparable, first Italian to have crossed the Atlantic alone. Among the guests of the Prize also Maxwell Kennedy (Robert's son, who will present his book Sea Change).