Climate change and resource exploitation have been shown to modify the importance of bottom-up and top-down forces in ecosystems. However, the resulting pattern of trophic control in complex food webs is an emergent property of the system and thus unintuitive. We develop a statistical nondeterministic model, capable of modeling complex patterns of trophic control for the heavily impacted North Sea ecosystem. The model is driven solely by fishing mortality and climatic variables and based on timeseries data covering >40 y for six plankton and eight fish groups along with one bird group (>20 y). Simulations show the outstanding importance of top-down exploitation pressure for the dynamics of fish populations. Whereas fishing effects on predators indirectly altered plankton abundance, bottom-up climatic processes dominate plankton dynamics. Importantly, we show planktivorous fish to have a central role in the North Sea food web initiating complex cascading effects across and between trophic levels. Our linked model integrates bottom-up and top-down effects and is able to simulate complex long-term changes in ecosystem components under a combination of stressor scenarios. Our results suggest that in marine ecosystems, pathways for bottomup and top-down forces are not necessarily mutually exclusive and together can lead to the emergence of complex patterns of control.trophic control | ecosystem modeling | marine food web functioning | wasp-waist | regime shifts T he question of whether food webs are resource-(bottom-up) or predation-(top-down) controlled is one of the most fundamental research questions in ecology (1-3). Marine ecosystems, originally thought to be mainly steered by bottom-up control, have recently been shown to exhibit periods of top-down control due to the extraction of large predators through fishing (4-7) or climate oscillations (8). Furthermore, experimental evidence shows climate warming may exert a host of indirect effects on aquatic food webs mediated through shifts in the magnitudes of top-down and bottom-up forcing (9, 10). However, for large marine ecosystems that are not amenable to experimentation studies, investigations of how interactions in their complex food webs mediate the influence of both top-down (e.g., fishing) and bottom-up (e.g., climate change) control are lacking or are based on aggregated species complexes. We model an extensive historical dataset for the North Sea (over 45 y) at the lowest possible resolution (often species) to determine key interactions between species and estimate their responses to pressures. The model reveals both simple (direct) and complex (indirect) pathways linking plankton to seabirds and can highlight the wider effects of climate change and potential actions by fishery managers.The North Sea is one of the most anthropogenically impacted marine ecosystem and is thought to be fundamentally driven from the bottom-up through climatic (temperature-related) influences on plankton, planktivorous fish, and the pelagic stages of demersal fish (11-13). Som...

ABSTRACT1. Marine legislation, the key means by which the conservation of marine biodiversity is achieved, has been developing since the 1960s. In recent decades, an increasing focus on 'holistic' policy development is evident, compared with earlier 'piecemeal' sectoral approaches. Important marine legislative tools being used in the United Kingdom, and internationally, include the designation of marine protected areas and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) with its aim of meeting 'Good Environmental Status' (GES) for European seas by 2020.2. There is growing evidence of climate change impacts on marine biodiversity, which may compromise the effectiveness of any legislation intended to promote sustainable marine resource management.3. A review of key marine biodiversity legislation relevant to the UK shows climate change was not considered in the drafting of much early legislation. Despite the huge increase in knowledge of climate change impacts in recent decades, legislation is still limited in how it takes these impacts into account. There is scope, however, to account for climate change in implementing much of the legislation through (a) existing references to environmental variability; (b) review cycles; and (c) secondary legislation and complementary policy development.4. For legislation relating to marine protected areas (e.g. the EC Habitats and Birds Directives), climate change has generally not been considered in the site-designation process, or for ongoing management, with the exception of the Marine (Scotland) Act. Given that changing environmental conditions (e.g. rising temperatures and ocean acidification) directly affect the habitats and species that sites are designated for, how this legislation is used to protect marine biodiversity in a changing climate requires further consideration.5. Accounting for climate change impacts on marine biodiversity in the development and implementation of legislation is vital to enable timely, adaptive management responses. Marine modelling can play an important role in informing management decisions.

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Since 2011, when the first European ocean literacy (OL) project was launched in Portugal, the number of initiatives about this topic in Europe has increased notoriously and their scope has largely widened. These initiatives have drawn from the seven "OL Principles" that were developed by the College of Exploration OL Network in 2005. They represent a source of inspiration for the many endeavors that are aiming to achieve a society that fully understands the influence of themselves-as individuals and as a population-on the ocean and the influence of the ocean on them. OL initiatives throughout the past years, globally, have resulted in the production of countless didactic and communication resources that represent a valuable legacy for new activities. The OL research community recognizes the need to build up the scope of OL by reaching the wider Blue Economy actors such as the maritime industrial sector. It is hoped that building OL in this sector will contribute to the long-term sustainable development of maritime activities. The ERASMUS+ project "MATES" aims to address the maritime industries' skills shortages and contribute to a more resilient labor market. MATES' hypothesis is that through building OL in educational, professional and industrial environments, it is possible to build a labor force that matches the skills demand in these sectors and increases their capacity to uptake new knowledge. The MATES partnership will explicitly combine OL and knowledge transfer by applying the "COLUMBUS Knowledge Transfer Methodology" as developed by the H2020-funded COLUMBUS project.

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