Atlantic Area Eunis Habitats. Adding new habitat types from European Atlantic coast to the EUNIS Habitat Classification

Marine protection has been emphasized through global and European conventions which highlighted the need for the establishment of special areas of conservation. Classification and habitat mapping have been developed to enhance the assessment of marine environment and improve spatial and strategic planning of human activities and to help on the implementation of ecosystem based management. European Nature information System (EUNIS) is a comprehensive habitat classification system to facilitate the harmonised description and collection of habitat and biotopes that has been developed by the European Environment Agency (EEA) in collaboration with experts from institutions throughout Europe.

Weight-length relationships for five fish species from a temperate coastal lagoon of southern Europe

The weight-length relationships (WLR) were estimated for five fish species of Ria Formosa, a coastal lagoon in southern Portugal. WLRs for Gobius couchi, Pomatoschistus microps and Parablennius pilicornis were determined for the first time ever and for Gobius cruentatus for the first time for the southern European Atlantic coast.

Transboundary dimensions of marine spatial planning: Fostering inter-jurisdictional relations and governance

There is broad agreement that marine spatial planning (MSP) should incorporate transboundary considerations, reflecting the cross-border nature of marine and coastal ecosystem dynamics and maritime resources and activities. This is recognised in the European Union's recent legislation on MSP, and experience in transboundary approaches is developing through official processes and pilot studies.

Ecological genetics in the North Atlantic: environmental gradients and adaptation at specific loci

The North Atlantic intertidal community provides a rich set of organismal and environmental material for the study of ecological genetics. Clearly defined environmental gradients exist at multiple spatial scales: there are broad latitudinal trends in temperature, meso-scale changes in salinity along estuaries, and smaller scale gradients in desiccation and temperature spanning the intertidal range. The geology and geography of the American and European coasts provide natural replication of these gradients, allowing for population genetic analyses of parallel adaptation to environmental stress and heterogeneity. Statistical methods have been developed that provide genomic neutrality tests of population differentiation and aid in the process of candidate gene identification. In this paper, we review studies of marine organisms that illustrate associations between an environmental gradient and specific genetic markers. Such highly differentiated markers become candidate genes for adaptation to the environmental factors in question, but the functional significance of genetic variants must be comprehensively evaluated. We present a set of predictions about locus-specific selection across latitudinal, estuarine, and intertidal gradients that are likely to exist in the North Atlantic. We further present new data and analyses that support and contradict these simple selection models. Some taxa show pronounced clinal variation at certain loci against a background of mild clinal variation at many loci. These cases illustrate the procedures necessary for distinguishing selection driven by internal genomic vs. external environmental factors. We suggest that the North Atlantic intertidal community provides a model system for identifying genes that matter in ecology due to the clarity of the environmental stresses and an extensive experimental literature on ecological function. While these organisms are typically poor genetic and genomic models, advances in comparative genomics have provided access to molecular tools that can now be applied to taxa with well-defined ecologies. As many of the organisms we discuss have tight physiological limits driven by climatic factors, this synthesis of molecular population genetics with marine ecology could provide a sensitive means of assessing evolutionary responses to climate change.

Size selectivity of trammel nets in southern European small-scale fisheries

Trammel net size selectivity was studied for the most important metiers in four southern European areas: the Cantabrian Sea (Atlantic, Basque Country, Spain), the Algarve (Atlantic, southern Portugal), the Gulf of Cadiz (Atlantic, Spain) and the Cyclades Islands (Mediterranean, Aegean Sea, Greece). These metiers were: cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) and soles (Solea senegalensis, Microchirus azevia, Synaptura lusitanica) in the Algarve and the Gulf of Cadiz, sole (Solea solea) in the Cantabrian Sea and mixed fin-fish in the Cyclades. In each area, experimental trammel nets of six different types (combinations of two large outer panel mesh sizes and three small inner panel meshes) were constructed. Fishing trials were carried out on a seasonal basis (four seasons in the Cantabrian Sea, Algarve and Cyclades and two seasons in the Gulf of Cadiz) with chartered commercial fishing vessels. Overall, size selectivity was estimated for 17 out of 28 species for which sufficient data were available. Trammel nets generally caught a wide size range of the most important species, with length frequency distributions that were skewed to the right and/or bi-modal. In many cases the length frequency distributions of the different nets were highly overlapped. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test also showed that the large outer panel meshes generally had no effect in terms of size selectivity, while the opposite was true for the small inner panel ones. Six different selectivity models (normal scale, normal location, gamma, log-normal, bi-modal and gamma semi-Wileman) were fitted to data for the most abundant species in the four areas. For fish, the bi-modal model provided the best fits for the majority of the data sets, with the uni-modal models giving poor fits in most cases. For Sepia officinalis, where trammelling or pocketing was the method of capture in 100% of the cases, the logistic model fitted by maximum likelihood was judged to be more appropriate for describing the size selective properties of the trammel nets. Our results, which are among the first ones on trammel net selectivity in European waters, will be useful for evaluating the impacts of competing gear for the socio-economically important small-scale static gear fisheries. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.

Trammel net catch species composition, catch rates and metiers in southern European waters: A multivariate approach

We identified and quantified the effect of season, depth, and inner and outer panel mesh size on the trammel net catch species composition and catch rates in four southern European areas (Northeast Atlantic: Basque Country, Spain; Algarve, Portugal; Gulf of Cadiz, Spain; Mediterranean: Cyclades, Greece), all of which are characterised by important trammel net fisheries. In each area, we conducted, in 1999-2000, seasonal, experimental fishing trials at various depths with trammel nets of six different inner/outer panel mesh combinations (i.e., two large outer panel meshes and three small inner panel meshes). Overall, our study covered some of the most commonly used inner panel mesh sizes, ranging from 40 to 140 mm (stretched). We analysed the species composition and catch rates of the different inner/outer panel combinations with regression, multivariate analysis (cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling) and other 'community' techniques (number of species, dominance curves). All our analyses indicated that the outer panel mesh sizes used in the present study did not significantly affect the catch characteristics in terms of number of species, catch rates and species composition. Multivariate analyses and seasonal dominance plots indicated that in Basque, Algarve and Cyclades waters, where sampling covered wide depth ranges, both season and depth strongly affected catch species compositions. For the Gulf of Cadiz, where sampling was restricted to depths 10-30 m, season was the only factor affecting catch species composition and thus group formation. In contrast, the inner panel mesh size did not generally affect multidimensional group formation in all areas but affected the dominance of the species caught in the Algarve and the Gulf of Cadiz. Multivariate analyses also revealed 11 different metiers (i.e., season-depth-species-inner panel mesh size combinations) in the four areas. This clearly indicated the existence of trammel net 'hot spots', which represent essential habitats (e.g., spawning, nursery or wintering grounds) of the life history of the targeted and associated species. The number of specimens caught declined significantly with inner panel mesh size in all areas. We attributed this to the exponential decline in abundance with size, both within- and between-species. In contrast, the number of species caught in each area was not related to the inner mesh size. This was unexpected and might be a consequence of the wide size-selective range of trammel nets. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.

Unexpectedly high catch-and-release rates in European marine recreational fisheries: implications for science and management

While catch-and-release (C&R) is a well-known practice in several European freshwater recreational fisheries, studies on the magnitude and impact of this practice in Europeanmarine recreational fisheries are limited. To provide an overview of the practice andmagnitude of C&R among marine recreational anglers in Europe, the existing knowledge of C&R and its potential associated release mortality was collected andsummarized. The present study revealed that in several European countries over half of the total recreational catch is released by marine anglers. High release proportions of > 60% were found for Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), pollack (Pollachius pollachius), and sea trout (Salmo trutta) in at least one of the studied European countries. In the case of the German recreational Baltic Sea cod fishery, release proportions varied considerably between years, presumably tracking a strong year class ofundersized fish. Reasons for release varied between countries and species, and included legal restrictions (e.g. minimumlanding sizes and daily bag limits) and voluntary C&R. Considering the magnitude of C&R practice among European marine recreational anglers, post-release mortalities of released fish may need to be accounted for in estimated fishingmortalities.However, as the survival rates of Europeanmarine species aremostly unknown, there is a need to conduct post-release survival studies and to identify factors affecting post-release survival. Such studies could also assist in developing species-specific, best-practice guidelines to minimize the impacts of C&R on released marine fish in Europe.

Broad-scale mapping of seafloor habitats in the north-east Atlantic using existing environmental data

If marine management policies and actions are to achieve long-term sustainable use and management of the marine environment and its resources, they need to be informed by data giving the spatial distribution of seafloor habitats over large areas. Broad-scale seafloor habitat mapping is an approachwhich has the benefit of producing maps covering large extents at a reasonable cost. This approach was first investigated by Roff et al. (2003), who, acknowledging that benthic communities are strongly influenced by the physical characteristics of the seafloor, proposed overlaying mapped physical variables using a geographic information system (GIS) to produce an integrated map of the physical characteristics of the seafloor. In Europe the method was adapted to the marine section of the EUNIS (European Nature Information System) classification of habitat types under the MESH project, andwas applied at an operational level in 2011 under the EUSeaMap project. The present study compiled GIS layers for fundamental physical parameters in the northeast Atlantic, including (i) bathymetry, (ii) substrate type, (iii) light penetration depth and (iv) exposure to near-seafloor currents andwave action. Based on analyses of biological occurrences, significant thresholds were fine-tuned for each of the abiotic layers and later used in multi-criteria raster algebra for the integration of the layers into a seafloor habitat map. The final result was a harmonised broad-scale seafloor habitat map with a 250 m pixel size covering four extensive areas, i.e. Ireland, the Bay of Biscay, the Iberian Peninsula and the Azores. The map provided the first comprehensive perception of habitat spatial distribution for the Iberian Peninsula and the Azores, and fed into the initiative for a pan- European map initiated by the EUSeaMap project for Baltic, North, Celtic and Mediterranean seas.