Coastal marine environments provide livelihoods as billions of people around the world depend greatly on sustainability efforts in the Blue Economy. In this study, we investigated how stakeholders from important Blue Economy sectors along the German North Sea coast perceive the impacts of climate change on their daily work life and the growth of the Blue Economy. In a two-stage approach we first conducted two stakeholder workshops with representatives from the regional sea food sector, science, NGOs and local authorities, in order to identify important issues linked to climate change affecting environment, society, economy and policy. In the second stage, we conducted semi-structured interviews with key knowledge holders from the Blue Economy, to evaluate and validate the most important issues identified during the first stage, and the impacts on the respective sectors. The workshop participants identified perceptible effects of climate change on their marine environment. Early career scientists showed that they possess a clear focus on measures for climate change adaptation, transdisciplinary approaches and knowledge transfer. The interviews revealed that the climate change effects could be perceived as both negative and positive, depending on the sector. Other issues, especially political decisions and developments are perceived to have a greater immediate impact on the Blue Economy than the slow progress of climate change effects. Additionally, increased human activities, in the form of new or intensified uses like marine renewable energy generation, have a greater influence and lead to conflicts between the Blue Economy sectors. Our study showed that economic and societal stakeholders in Germanys North Sea region are aware of climate change and already perceive its effects on their businesses. Synergies and conflicts between the sectors and political decisions might influence sustainable growth of the Blue Economy in highly contested regions, such as the North Sea basin, much stronger than the effects of climate change. This calls for a more flexible and adaptive approach to policymaking, taking into account the changing environmental, social and economic realities.

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The European oyster Ostrea edulis played a key role in the North Sea by providing several ecosystem functions and services. Today, O. edulis is classified as severely degraded or functionally extinct in Europe. Marine conservation is focusing on biogenic reef restoration, namely the restoration of O. edulis in Natura 2000 sites of the North Sea. The identification of oyster larvae related to natural spatfalls of restored reefs and monitoring of larval drift is a key aspect of marine protected area management. Morphological identification and distinction from other abundant bivalve larvae using microscopy is difficult. Existing molecular biological methods are expensive and bound to stationary laboratory equipment, or are inadequate in the visualization. In this study, we identified nucleic acid lateral flow immunoassay (NALFIA), a well-established tool in human pathogen diagnostics, as an efficient approach for point-of-care (POC) testing in marine monitoring. Based on the genetic sequence of the mitochondrial cytochrome b of O. edulis, forward and reverse primers were developed. The reverse primer was labelled with fluorescent dye FITC, forward primer with biotin. Reaction on the lateral flow stripe could be realized with a single O. edulis larva in direct PCR with multiplex primers in a portable PCR-cycler. The established NALFIA system can distinguish O. edulis larvae from Crassostrea gigas and Mytilus edulis larvae, respectively. This method offers new approaches in POC testing in marine research and monitoring. It gives quick and clear results, is inexpensive, and could be easily adapted to other species of interest.