The challenge attempts to collect discards data for the North Atlantic sea basin (i.e. north of the equator, excluding Caribe, Baltic, North Sea and Artic) and to compute: mass and number of discards by species and year, including fish, mammals, reptiles and seabirds. Data are presented in an Excel's spreadsheet.

This data product selects sample areas of digital bathymetry, chosen for their relevance to marine activities and data sources alternative to GEBCO. The approach for building the digital map of water depth is to use GEBCO as a baseline and look at a set of sample areas where GEBCO could be improved upon. Sample areas have also been selected to be representative of each continent bordering the Atlantic and expected future requirements. Data sources include GEBCO, EMODNET, USGS and CHS.

Map at 1 degree resolution of 10 year linear trend in sea water temperature at 3 levels: surface, 500m , bottom

This product is a map of the uncertainty of available digital bathymetry measurements for the North Atlantic Ocean. This is done for a spatial resolution feasible for this large area (25km x 25km). It is designed to assess the quality of the bathymetry readings with a view to supporting assessments of future need. The product is formulated through a number of characteristics of the data including age of measurement and slope.

Annual resolution time-series of the annual averaged basin average-SST. Calculate the annual average SST on a 1degree grid and then find the area weighted average.

Map the occurrence of ice at 1-degree resolution over different periods of the last century (1915-2014, 1965-2014, 2005-2014, 2009-2014). For each entire period (100, 50, 10, 5 years) find and map all cells of the 1 degree grid that experience ice conditions in at least 1 month.

Identified areas across the north Atlantic which have been flagged as priority locations for quality bathymetry data, in the context of expanded shipping traffic and port expansions. The reference to determine the priority survey areas in combination with shiping routes and port locations are the bathymetric data sources used for product 2( GEBCO, EMODnet bathymetry, USGS and CHS) and the depth uncertainty derived of Product 2. The adequacy assessment of the input characteristics of Product 3 is limited to the shiping routes and port locations.

Phyto plankton Abundance: Identify the 3 most abundant phytoplankton species in the North Atlantic and calculate a timeseries of their abundance within the basin.

Map at 1 degree resolution of 50-year linear trend in sea water temperature at 3 levels: surface, 500m, bottom.

Assess whether the MPA network constitutes a representative and coherent network as described in article 13 of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive 3 products were specified to achieve the second objectif of the challenge: ATLANTIC_CH02_Product_2 / Quantitative analyse of MPA coherency The product comprises 4 components: Distribution of vulnerable marine habitats : Shape represent the distribution of different vulnérable habitats Distribution biologically or ecologically significant areas (EBSAs) Critical areas of vulnerable species Distribution of indicator species The method used computes the percentage coverage between : Vulnerable habitats like carbon sinks, reef, kelp... Ecologically or biologically significant area Life critical area (feeding , breeding, migratory routes, spawning, dispersal larvea, nursery…) for indicator species Distribution of indicator species in the study area and MPA network location.