Development of tools for ecological quality assessment in the Polish marine areas according to the Water Framework Directive. Part IV — preliminary assessment

Abstract

A set of classification methods was developed for the Polish coastal and transitional waters regarding the biological quality elements -phytoplankton, macrophytes and macroinvertebrates as required by the EU Water Framework Directive. Mean summer chlorophyll-a and total summer biomass of phytoplankton were proposed as indicators in the * Corresponding author e-mail: Elzbieta. Lysiak-Pastuszak@imgw.pl phytoplankton assessment. Macrophytes were assessed by the Macrophyte Quality Assessment Index, including biomass and percent bottom coverage of the selected taxa. Macroinvertebrate assessment was based on a biotic index comprising abundance, dominance structure, taxonomical richness and species sensitivity/tolerance to eutrophication. A preliminary assessment of the ecological status revealed that the coastal and transitional waters failed to reach a 'good' ecological status.

Macrophyta as a vector of contemporary and historical mercury from the marine environment to the trophic web

“…Those results also indicated that some species previously considered as rare (i.e., the brown alga Polysiphonia sp. and the red alga Furcellaria lumbricalis ) had previously covered quite a large part of the seabed in the Polish coastal zone of the Baltic and that their proportion in the total macroalgae biomass had in some areas exceeded 80 % (Osowiecki et al 2009 ; Saniewski 2013 ). This is of particular importance as, in the present study, brown and red algae were characterised by significantly higher Hg TOT concentrations than macroalgae from the Chlorophyta group (Kruskal-Wallis test, p = 0.00) (Table 1 ).…”

Gone and Back—The Anthropogenic History of Coccotylus brodiei (Turner) Kützing and Furcellaria lumbricalis (Hudson) J.V. Lamouroux in the Gulf of Gdańsk (Southern Baltic Sea)

“…Since the publication presenting data from the 1980s [5], no free-floating form in the Polish Baltic Sea zone has been observed, and some authors assumed that natural recovery of Furcellaria lumbricalis form. aegagropila in Puck Bay, even if environmental conditions are improved, is highly improbable [43].…”

“…In addition, in the last 10 years, vegetation studies were carried out randomly in the case of studies of other ecosystem elements [48,49]. In turn, the national monitoring of macroalgae and flowering plants in Puck Bay has been conducted since 2010 on a short transect (approximately 400 m) located in the Zostera meadow at the northeastern end of the bay near Kuźnica [43]. The low intensity of the research conducted on vegetation may probably be the reason for the lack of previous observations of representatives of both species, i.e., Coccotylus brodiei and Furcellaria lumbricalis, even if they started to appear in higher numbers long before 2019.…”