Large marine protected areas (LMPAs) in the Mediterranean Sea: The opportunity of the Adriatic Sea

Bastari, Azzurra; Micheli, Fiorenza; Ferretti, Francesco; Pusceddu, Antonio; Cerrano, Carlo

doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2016.03.010

Cited by 53 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 123 publications

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“…An exception to the good correspondence between the current and previous assessments is the Adriatic Sea, where the assessment provided by NEAT appears too low considering the current trends, also reported in the scientific literature, and available information from expert opinions (Coll et al, 2010;Bastari et al, 2016). Despite the historical impacts on this shallow water basin, the Adriatic Sea is still characterized by a wide diversity of habitats, including rocky and soft bottoms, large estuaries and lagoons, seagrass meadows and in, its southern part, also deep-water environments.…”

Section: Evaluation Of the Assessment Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indicator-Based Assessment of Marine Biological Diversity–Lessons from 10 Case Studies across the European Seas

Uusitalo

Blanchet

Andersen³

et al. 2016

Front. Mar. Sci.

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The Marine Strategy Framework Directive requires the environmental status of European marine waters to be assessed using biodiversity as 1 out of 11 descriptors, but the complexity of marine biodiversity and its large span across latitudinal and salinity gradients have been a challenge to the scientific community aiming to produce approaches for integrating information from a broad range of indicators. The Nested Environmental status Assessment Tool (NEAT), developed for the integrated assessment of the status of marine waters, was applied to 10 marine ecosystems to test its applicability and compare biodiversity assessments across the four European regional seas. We evaluate the assessment results as well as the assessment designs of the 10 cases, and how the assessment design, particularly the choices made regarding the area and indicator selection, affected the results. The results show that only 2 out of the 10 case study areas show more than 50% probability of being in good status in respect of biodiversity. No strong pattern among the ecosystem components across the case study areas could be detected, but marine mammals, birds, and benthic vegetation indicators tended to indicate poor status while zooplankton indicators indicated good status when included into the assessment. The analysis shows that the assessment design, including the selection of indicators, their target values, geographical resolution Uusitalo et al.Case-Studies of Marine Biodiversity and habitats to be assessed, has potentially a high impact on the result, and the assessment structure needs to be understood in order to make an informed assessment. Moreover, recommendations are provided for the best practice of using NEAT for marine status assessments.

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Section: Evaluation Of the Assessment Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indicator-Based Assessment of Marine Biological Diversity–Lessons from 10 Case Studies across the European Seas

Uusitalo

Blanchet

Andersen³

et al. 2016

Front. Mar. Sci.

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“…However, because the interviewed fishers in most cases did not give us the specific characteristics of their fishing gears (e.g., detailed size of trawl net and numbers of used gears per haul), it was not possible to confirm and clearly relate the fishing effort and fishing gear characteristics with the observed megafauna trends. More detailed analysis and new interviews are needed to fill these gaps and to explore the most adequate restoration measures (Bastari et al, 2016) that need to be urgently adopted.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local Ecological Knowledge Indicates Temporal Trends of Benthic Invertebrates Species of the Adriatic Sea

et al. 2017

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In the Adriatic Sea, shifts in benthic community structure have been attributed to multiple stressors, from the effects of climate change to the impacts of commercial fishing. Some fishing practices, such as bottom trawling, have caused a widespread decline in exploited fish stocks. Bottom trawling is also expected to have negative impacts on benthic habitats, usually structured by and hosting a large array of invertebrate species, which provide important ecological services to fish and commercial invertebrate stocks. However, in contrast to commercial species for which long-term time series of the abundance exist, data on these habitat-forming invertebrates are scarce, as they are usually caught as bycatch and discarded. Therefore, there is great uncertainty about their long-term trends, and if these populations are stable or declining. Here we used interview surveys conducted with bottom-trawling fishers of the central Adriatic Sea to gather local ecological knowledge on megabenthos abundance occurring in their fishing domain, as an alternative source of information to conventional fisheries data. We interviewed 44 fishers, from the most important ports of the Marche region of Italy, to understand how megabenthic species have changed in abundance within the area since the 1980s. Specifically, we asked fishers to provide qualitative abundance scores for 18 invertebrate species in five phyla (Porifera, Cnidaria, Bryozoa, Mollusca, and Echinodermata) based on their recollection of these species' presence in bycatch. We stratified responses in homogeneous temporal periods and geographic sectors of the study area, and analyzed their response with mixed effect ordered logistic regression models in order to evaluate spatiotemporal changes in the perceived abundance of each species. Our analysis suggests that the abundance of the sponge Geodia cydonium, the molluscs Pecten jacobaeus, Atrina fragilis, Neopycnodonte cochlear, and the group of holothurians, have declined. From fishers' perceptions, only the bryozoan Amathia semiconvoluta has increased. Local ecological knowledge can provide important information on environmental change and can highlight species and ecosystems at risk when conventional scientific data are scarce or absent. This approach can be expanded to other regions of the Adriatic and broader Mediterranean Sea to reconstruct change of this heavily exploited marine region.

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“…Humans have long exploited the resources of the Adriatic, and commercial fisheries, habitats, and ecosystem services have declined markedly over the past century (Lotze et al 2011). A considerable portion of the Adriatic Sea has been identified as a top priority for Mediterranean conservation (Micheli et al 2013), and efforts are ongoing to plan and establish large MPAs (Bastari et al 2016). We focus on one of these areas, the closure of the Jabuka/Pomo Pit region in the Adriatic, to assess the spatial redistribution of fishing effort.…”

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confidence: 99%

Leveraging vessel traffic data and a temporary fishing closure to inform marine management

Elahi

Ferretti

Bastari

et al. 2018

Frontiers in Ecol & Environ

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The benefits of protected areas depend on compliance, and achieving protection remains a challenge in intensely used areas where conservation and socioeconomic goals are in real or apparent conflict. One recent innovation – satellite tracking of commercial fishing vessels – has been introduced to help with ocean protection initiatives and build trust between fishers and managers. We paired vessel traffic data before and during a temporary closure in the Adriatic Sea with data on fish nursery habitat to examine changes in fishing effort and their potential consequences. Trawlers generally complied with the closure but maintained overall effort by trawling more intensely outside of the no‐trawl zone, especially near its borders and closer to shore. We detected stronger than expected fishing effort in a sub‐region within the protected area, suggesting that this location should be closely monitored for compliance. Notably, fishing effort was relocated to nursery grounds for some exploited species, illustrating the importance of understanding species’ life histories and habitat distribution in the design of protected areas.

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Large marine protected areas (LMPAs) in the Mediterranean Sea: The opportunity of the Adriatic Sea

Cited by 53 publications

References 123 publications

Indicator-Based Assessment of Marine Biological Diversity–Lessons from 10 Case Studies across the European Seas

Indicator-Based Assessment of Marine Biological Diversity–Lessons from 10 Case Studies across the European Seas

Local Ecological Knowledge Indicates Temporal Trends of Benthic Invertebrates Species of the Adriatic Sea

Leveraging vessel traffic data and a temporary fishing closure to inform marine management

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