Marine and freshwater ecosystems are constantly threatened by diffuse and accidental oil-pollution with hardly predictable consequences for aquatic organisms, biodiversity and the functioning and services of aquatic ecosystems.
This is the background of the 
EC FP6 Project FACEiT (Fast Advanced Cellular and Ecosystems Information Technologies), comprising 12 European universities, research institutes and companies.
The symposium aims to:
- Highlight the current knowledge of ecological impacts and attenuation of aquatic oil pollution,
- Present advances in the development of biomarkers and bioassays for the efficient detection of ecological effects of oil contamination, and
- Present results from the application of such techniques in an experimental oil spill in the North Sea.
The meeting brings together international experts and stakeholders, especially from industry and governmental institutions, to facilitate the transfer of technologies developed by FACEiT. The 
programme includes lectures and poster presentations. The potential of bioassay and biomarker technologies for oil disaster management and as a basis for mitigation measures will be discussed.
We kindly invite you to participate and contribute.
The main goal of the FACEiT project is to better predict the biological effects of large scale petroleum oil pollution disasters. For this purpose, the consortium develops and tests new pollutant monitoring technologies based on biological assays at different levels of complexity, from bacterial cells up to ecosystems.
