Towards Integrated Marine Research Strategy and Programmes CIGESMED : Coralligenous based Indicators to evaluate and monitor the "Good Environmental Status" of the Mediterranean coastal waters French dates: 1st March2013 -29th October2016 Greek dates: 1st January2013 -31st December2015 Turkish dates: 1st February2013 –31st January2016 FINAL REPORT Féral (J.-P.)/P.I., Arvanitidis (C.), Chenuil (A.), Çinar (M.E.), David (R.), Egea (E.), Sartoretto (S.) 1 INDEX 1. Project consortium. Total funding and per partner .............................................................. 3 2. Executive summary ............................................................................................................... 3 3. Aims and scope (objectives) .................................................................................................. 6 4. Results by work package ....................................................................................................... 8 WP1: MANAGEMENT, COORDINATION & REPORTING ............................................................. 8 WP2: CORALLIGEN ASSESSMENT AND THREATS ..................................................................... 15 WP3: INDICATORS DEVELOPMENT AND TEST ......................................................................... 39 WP4: INNOVATIVE MONITORING TOOLS ................................................................................ 52 WP5: CITIZEN SCIENCE NETWORK IMPLEMENTATION ........................................................... 58 WP6: DATA MANAGEMENT, MAPPING AND ASSIMILATION TOOLS ....................................... 61 WP7: OUTREACH, STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT & DISSEMINATION .................................... 66 5. Key findings and conclusions............................................................................................... 68 6. Added value or barriers of international cooperation ........................................................ 70 ADVANTAGES OF THE INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION.......................................................... 70 DISADVANTAGES/BARRIERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION ................................... 70 7. Indicators. ............................................................................................................................ 71 8. List of publications .............................................................................................................. 72 PAPERS ..................................................................................................................................... 72 CONFERENCES & PROCEEDINGS .............................................................................................. 76 Posters ..................................................................................................................................... 79 EVENT (OUTREACH) ................................................................................................................. 80 WEBSITES ................................................................................................................................. 82 MEETINGS & WORKSHOPS ...................................................................................................... 83 9. Species List .......................................................................................................................... 84 10. FURTHER REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 92 11. ANNEXES ......................................................................................................................... 93 2 1. PROJECT CONSORTIUM. TOTAL FUNDING AND PER PARTNER Partner name Funding agency Actual Expensed (country) workload amount (euros) Partner number 1. CNRS : Centre Nationale de la ANR (France) 34% 212 351€ Coordinator Recherche Scientifique (33% of total) 2. EGE Ege University TÜBITAK 22% 133 141€ (Turkey) (21% of total) 3. IFREMER Institut Français de ANR (France) 4% 41 080€ Recherche pour l’Exploitation (6% of total) de la Mer 4 HCMR Hellenic Center for GSRT (Greece) 25% 175 849€ Marine Research (27% of total) 5 NMPZ: National Marine Park of ANR (France) 14% 76 300€ Zakynthos (12% of total) x LIGAMEN ANR (France) x 8 984€ (1% of total) Total 100% 649 346€ 2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Coralligenous is a hard-bottom mainly CIGESMED’s GOAL was to understand links biogenic habitat, produced by the agglomeration of between natural and anthropogenic pressures and calcareous encrusting algae growing in dim-light coralligenous habitats as well as the effects on their conditions. It is characterized by high structural functioning to define the Good Environmental complexity and spatial heterogeneity, thus Status (GES) of the coastal Mediterranean Sea and supporting rich biodiversity and a variety of sessile propose solutions for maintaining good assemblages, shaping a typical and one of the most environmental conditions. important habitats of the Mediterranean Sea. It Coralligenous specific indices have been produces goods (e.g. food, raw material) and constructed and tested by scientists, marine services in several domains (e.g. CO2 natural parks and reserves managers, also through sequestration, aesthetics and education). Pollution, the implementation of a “citizen science” pilot smothering and abrasion from a variety of human network. The use of the newest data mining activities may cause its degradation at a broad techniques and the development of visualization scale, whilst fishing and collection of organisms tools to sort, organize and illustrate very large mainly affect target species. Its high aesthetic heterogeneous sets of data constitute an original value may also induce frequentation by SCUBA but complex approach. It permitted to mobilize, divers, an additional cause of degradation. visualize and share large data collections, and to Coralligenous is also susceptible to invasive alien manage knowledge to study these habitats. species. This habitat, which is of great ecological, The OUTCOME consists of: i) socio-economic and cultural importance, is also experimentation and results of new methods to under the pressures linked to global warming. build survey at large scales (testing operating process and materials during dive, photo analyses, 3 population genetics, phylogenetic and among sites and countries. The multivariate metabarcoding approaches) ii) tools to diffuse new analysis revealed five main assemblages across the methods (website, services, training and field tools Mediterra-nean Sea. A number of important threats for scientists and citizen science, publications) and were withnessed to have an important impact on avoid indices misun-derstanding, iii) tools, methods coralligenous, with the settlement of invasive alien and prototypes to provide datamining usable for an species (e.g. Caulerpa cylindracea, Womersleyella integrative assessment of the GES within the setacea), sedimentation and factors causing algal Framework of the Marine Strategy Directive (for bleaching being the most important ones. this part, CIGESMED members initiated a new consortium 1 using CIGESMED metadata and A new method and index were applied and dataset to build graph representation, mine graphs tested in France (60 stations in Gulf of Lions and and provide tools for environmental decision Provence) and Greece (4 stations in the Gulf of making). All the outcomes are freely accessible Corinth) to evaluate the health condition of online on websites with open access, open source coralligenous assemblages. This method (INDEX- and open data. COR), based on images analyses (60x40cm) and in The overall achievement was to to bring situ observations, takes into account three metrics together researchers (in ecology, economics, giving different levels of information: (i) the ratio sociology, law, etc.) and managers in order to (i) "Sensitive-Tolerante Species", (ii) the observable identify the needs and to better address them, (ii) taxonomic richness of the assemblages and (iii) the to determine interdisciplinary areas of research structural complexity. The global index combining concerning the development and management of these metrics was tested according to a global the coralligenous that could be the subject of a new index of pressure. Reference conditions were [multidisciplinary / European / Mediterranean] defined in France to propose an interpretation grid research project. to evaluate the status of coralligenous assemblages. This grid applied in Greece CIGESMED gathered scientists from France, demonstrated the necessity to collecte multiple and Greece and Turkey, making it possible to assess the complete dataset in order to define the reference coralligenous habitat in a number of sites in both conditions for the different Mediterranean sectors the northwestern Mediterranean basin and the (e.g. Ionian Sea, Egean Sea and Cretan Sea). Aegean-Levantine, under a common approach. Finally, additional indices (CAI, COARSE and ESCA) Members of ten highly experienced marine ecology were tested on the datasets obtained in France and laboratories were involved. Greece. The comparison of the results is still in progress. The first ones show the advantages and A total of 10 stations in France (in the Gulf the limits of each index. They underline the need to of Lions), Greece (in the Ionian and the Aegean achieve precisions on (i) their degree of sensitivity Seas) and Turkey (in the Aegean and the Levantine in the evaluation of the coralligenous assemblages