This visualization product displays the total abundance of marine macro-litter (> 2.5cm) per beach, per 100m & to 1 survey aggregated over the period 2001 to 2023 from Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) monitoring surveys. EMODnet Chemistry included the collection of marine litter in its 3rd phase. Since the beginning of 2018, data of beach litter have been gathered and processed in the EMODnet Chemistry Marine Litter Database (MLDB). The harmonization of all the data has been the most challenging task considering the heterogeneity of the data sources, sampling protocols and reference lists used on a European scale. Preliminary processings were necessary to harmonize all the data: - Exclusion of OSPAR 1000 protocol: in order to follow the approach of OSPAR that it is not including these data anymore in the monitoring; - Selection of MSFD surveys only (exclusion of other monitoring, cleaning and research operations); - Exclusion of beaches without coordinates; - Some categories & some litter types like organic litter, small fragments (paraffin and wax; items > 2.5cm) and pollutants have been removed. The list of selected items is attached to this metadata (total abundance list). This list was created using EU Marine Beach Litter Baselines, the European Threshold Value for Macro Litter on Coastlines and the Joint list of litter categories for marine macro-litter monitoring from JRC (these three documents are attached to this metadata); - Normalization of survey lengths to 100m & 1 survey / year: in some cases, the survey length was not exactly 100m, so in order to be able to compare the abundance of litter from different beaches a normalization is applied using this formula: Number of items (normalized by 100 m) = Number of litter per items x (100 / survey length) Then, this normalized number of items is summed to obtain the total normalized number of litter for each survey. Finally, a median is calculated over the entire period among all these total numbers of litter per 100m calculated for each survey. Sometimes the survey length was null or equal to 0. Assuming that the MSFD protocol has been applied, the length has been set at 100m in these cases. The size of each circle on this map increases with the calculated median number of marine litter per beach, per 100m & to 1 survey. The median litter abundance values displayed in the legend correspond to the 50 and 99 percentiles and the maximum value. More information is available in the attached documents. Warning: - the absence of data on the map does not necessarily mean that they do not exist, but that no information has been entered in the Marine Litter Database for this area. - This map was created to give an idea of the distribution of beach litter between 2001 and 2023 in a synthetic manner. NOT ALL BEACHES MAY HAVE DATA FOR THE ENTIRE PERIOD, SO IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO MAKE A COMPARISON BETWEEN BEACHES.

This visualization product displays the spatial distribution of the sampling effort over the six-years' period 2017-2022 from research and monitoring protocols. EMODnet Chemistry included the collection of marine litter in its 3rd phase. Before 2021, there was no coordinated effort at the regional or European scale for micro-litter. Given this situation, EMODnet Chemistry proposed to adopt the data gathering and data management approach as generally applied for marine data, i.e., populating metadata and data in the CDI Data Discovery and Access service using dedicated SeaDataNet data transport formats. EMODnet Chemistry is currently the official EU collector of micro-litter data from Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) National Monitoring activities (descriptor 10). A series of specific standard vocabularies or standard terms related to micro-litter have been added to SeaDataNet NVS (NERC Vocabulary Server) Common Vocabularies to describe the micro-litter. European micro-litter data are collected by the National Oceanographic Data Centres (NODCs). Micro-litter map products are generated from NODCs data after a test of the aggregated collection including data and data format checks and data harmonization. A filter is applied to represent only micro-litter samplings carried out according to research and monitoring protocols as MSFD monitoring. The spatial distribution was then determined by calculating the number of times each cell was sampled during the period 2017-2022. The corresponding total distance (kms) sampled in each cell is also provided in the attribute table. Warning: the absence of data on the map does not necessarily mean that they do not exist, but that no information has been entered in the National Oceanographic Data Centre (NODC) for this area.

EMODnet Chemistry aims to provide access to marine chemistry datasets and derived data products concerning eutrophication, acidity, contaminants and marine litter. The importance of the selected substances and other parameters relates to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). This aggregated dataset contains all unrestricted EMODnet Chemistry data profiles on eutrophication and acidity, and covers: the Artic Ocean, the North East Atlantic, the Greater North Sea and Celtic Seas, the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. ITS-90 water temperature and water body salinity variables have also been included ('as are') to complete the eutrophication and acidity data. If you use these variables for calculations, please refer to SeaDataNet for the quality flags: https://www.seadatanet.org/Products/Aggregated-datasets . This European dataset is the result of the aggregation of the regional datasets concerning eutrophication and acidity present in EMODnet Chemistry. The regional datasets are automatically harvested, and the resulting collections are aggregated and quality controlled using ODV Software and following a common methodology for all sea regions ( https://doi.org/10.13120/8xm0-5m67 ). Parameter names are based on P35 vocabulary, which relates to EMODnet Chemistry aggregated parameter names and is available at: https://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/search_nvs/P35/. This process were regionally performed by: 'Institute of Marine Research - Norwegian Marine Data Centre (NMD)' (Norway), 'IFREMER / IDM / SISMER - Scientific Information Systems for the SEA' (France), 'Aarhus University, Department of Bioscience, Marine Ecology Roskilde' (Denmark), 'Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI)' (Sweden), 'Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Hellenic National Oceanographic Data Centre (HCMR/HNODC)' (Greece) and 'National Institute for Marine Research and Development 'Grigore Antipa' (Romania). When not present in original data, water body nitrate plus nitrite was calculated by summing all nitrate and nitrite parameters. The same procedure was applied for water body dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), which was calculated by summing all nitrate, nitrite, and ammonium parameters. Concentrations per unit mass were converted to a unit volume using a constant density of 1.025 kg/L. The aggregated dataset can be downloaded as an ODV collection.

Particularly suited to the purpose of measuring the sensitivity of benthic communities to trawling, a trawl disturbance indicator (de Juan and Demestre, 2012, de Juan et al. 2009) was proposed based on benthic species life history traits to evaluate the sensibility of mega- and epifaunal community to fishing pressure known to have a physical impact on the seafloor (such as dredging and bottom trawling). The selected biological traits were chosen as they determine vulnerability to trawling: mobility, fragility, position on substrata, average size and feeding mode that can easily be related to the fragility, recoverability and vulnerability ecological concepts. Life history traits of species have been defined from the BIOTIC database (MARLIN, 2014) and from information given by Le Pape et al. (2007), Brindamour et al. (2009) and Garcia (2010). For missing life history traits, additional information from literature has been considered. The five categories retained are life history functional traits that were selected based on the knowledge of the response of benthic taxa to trawling disturbance (de Juan and Demestre, 2012). They reflect respectively the possibility to avoid direct gear impact, to benefit from trawling for feeding, to escape gear, to get caught by the net and to resist trawling/dredging action, each of these characteristics being either advantageous or sensitive to trawling. Then, to allow quantitative analysis, a score was assigned to each category: from low vulnerability (0) to high vulnerability (3). The five categories scores were then summed for each taxon (the highly vulnerable taxon could reach the maximum score is 15) and this value may be considered as a species index of sensitivity to trawling disturbance. The scores of 812 taxa commonly found in bottom trawl by-catch in the southern North Sea, English Channel and north-western Mediterranean were described.

The glider operations in the MOOSE network started to be deployed regularly in 2010 in the North Western Mediterranean Sea, thanks to the setup of national glider facilities at DT-INSU/Ifremer (http://www.dt.insu.cnrs.fr/gliders/gliders.php) and with the support of the European project FP7-PERSEUS. Two endurance lines are operated: MooseT00 (Nice-Calvi; Ligurian Sea) and MooseT02 (Marseille-Menorca; Gulf of Lion). The all dataset here corresponds to raw data in the EGO format.

EVHOE (« Evaluation Halieutique de l’Ouest Européen ») surveys provide observational data on bentho-demersal communities on the continental shelves of the Bay of Biscay and the Celtic Sea for more than 30 years. The surveys operate a standardized bottom trawling gear and are conducted from 15 to 600 m depth, usually in the fourth quarter of the year, starting at the end of October. The main objectives are the monitoring of 22 commercial stocks of fish species and 10 cephalopods from the North-East Atlantic. The dataset also provide a description of regional diversity, including 250 taxa of fish, 45 taxa of cephalopods and others “commercial” invertebrates and, from 2008, more than 350 other taxa of benthic invertebrates. The acquisition of this dataset, organised by IFREMER, is steered by the IBTS working group organised within the framework of ICES. It is being funded by the European DCMAP programme, in coordination with the French Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs, Fisheries and Aquaculture (DGAMPA). This dataset is of great interest for the long-term monitoring of the continental shelves of the Bay of Biscay and the Celtic Sea. Moreover, on a larger scale, by being integrated into a European network of bottom trawl surveys, these data play an essential role in studying the evolution of ecosystems from continental shelves to the scale of the eastern North Atlantic. From April 2025, the proposed data have been updated in the latest standard format recognised by IFREMER (‘ELFIC’ format). The 5 data tables are compiled in a .zip file which also contains a document detailing the content of each table and their respective data fields.

The present repository makes available the model, material and outputs of the ISIS-Fish modeling work showcased in the peer-reviewed scientific article by Bastardie et al. 2025. As part of the SEAwise research project (seawiseproject.org), we used an ISIS-Fish database (Mahevas et al 2003, Pelletier et al. 2009, isis-fish.org) previously developed within the MACCO project which describes the mixed demersal fishery in the Bay of Biscay. For this application, the spatial extent of the fishery is the Bay of Biscay, defined here by ICES divisions 8a, 8b and 8d and the resolution chosen is 1/16 ICES statistical rectangle. The biological module (Vajas et al. 2024) includes 7 species of economic interest in the mixed demersal fishery: European hake (Merluccius merluccius), common sole (Solea solea), Norway lobster (Nephrops norvegicus), megrim (Lepidorhombus whiffiagonis), anglerfish (Lophius piscatorius) and two ray species (Raja clavata, Leucoraja naevus). The fishing activities module (Mahevas et al. 2024) is made up of 41 demersal fleets (including all French vessels < 12 meters and > 12 meters fishing in this area, Spanich, UK and Belgium fleets) and 431 métiers (combination of a gear, location and mix of target species) catching these 7 species, as target or bycatch. Monthly effort of a fleet distributes among the possible métiers (those historically practiced). The biological and fishing activity modules are identical to the published version. The original model used here has been calibrated on historical catch data 2015-2018 by tuning accessibility and catchability parameters. In the present application the Bay of Biscay model is used to investigate the spatial- and effort- based fisheries management strategies. Consistently with for a task of the SEAwise project (Bastardie et al. 2024) simulations were conducted from 2021 onwards, projecting the effect of an implementation of 3 different closures from 2022 to 2050, under current fishing effort conditions or in a context of fishing effort reduction. Outcomes of these simulations are averaged over short/medium (10 year horizon) and long-term period (20 year horizon). The data project includes: 1) the database including the biological module and fishing activity module; 2) 8 .properties files, each corresponding to one combination of management measure and closure, to restore the simulations parameters in the ISIS-Fish interface and reproduce the simulation runs; 3) the .java scripts to force effort dynamics and simulate spatio-temporal closures, as well as generate the main output files - they will be called by the ISIS-Fish software once the simulations restored 4) the .rds containing the main outputs of the simulations and the associated .html document displaying the R code to compute the indices of interest at different levels of aggregation and reproduce the figures in Bastardie et al. 2025. All files are provided in the Zip. Associated with this material, a study summary and a readme .docx are provided. The first one provides context on the present work and describes the model and simulations' design. The second provides guidelines to reproduce the simulations and their derived outcomes from the data project material made available in this repository. They are both directly downloadable from this repository and are also copied to the zipped folder containing the data project. All the data are reproducible using isis-fish-4.4.8.1 (isis-fish.org; available at forge.codelutin.com) and R 4.2.0.

The shapefile corresponds to areas where predicted bioregions were extrapolated for lack of benthic in-situ observations.

EMODnet Chemistry aims to provide access to marine chemistry data sets and derived data products concerning eutrophication, ocean acidification, contaminants and litter. The chosen parameters are relevant for the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), in particular for descriptors 5, 8, 9 and 10. The dataset contains standardized, harmonized and validated data collections from beach litter (monitoring and other sources). Datasets concerning beach and seafloor litter data are loaded in a central database after a semi-automated validation phase. Once loaded, a data assessment is performed in order to check data consistency and potential errors are corrected thanks to a feedback loop with data originators. For beach litter, the harmonized datasets contain all unrestricted EMODnet Chemistry data on beach litter, including monitoring data, data from cleaning surveys and data from research. A relevant part of the monitoring data has been considered for assessment purposes by the European institutions and therefore is tagged as MSFD_monitoring. EMODnet beach litter data and databases are hosted and maintained by 'Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale, Division of Oceanography (OGS/NODC)' from Italy. Data are formatted following Guidelines and forms for gathering marine litter data, which can be found at: https://doi.org/10.6092/15c0d34c-a01a-4091-91ac-7c4f561ab508 The updated vocabularies of admitted values are available at: https://nodc.ogs.it/marinelitter/vocab The harmonized datasets can be downloaded as EMODnet Beach litter data format Version 7.0, which is a spreadsheet file composed of 4 sheets: beach metadata, survey metadata, animals and litter. Local_CDI field in the survey metadata sheet allows to retrieve the original data.

This visualization product displays the density of seafloor litter per trawl. EMODnet Chemistry included the collection of marine litter in its 3rd phase. Since the beginning of 2018, data of seafloor litter collected by international fish-trawl surveys have been gathered and processed in the EMODnet Chemistry Marine Litter Database (MLDB). The harmonization of all the data has been the most challenging task considering the heterogeneity of the data sources, sampling protocols (OSPAR and MEDITS protocols) and reference lists used on a European scale. Moreover, within the same protocol, different gear types are deployed during bottom trawl surveys. In cases where the wingspread and/or the number of items were/was unknown, it was not possible to use the data because these fields are needed to calculate the density. Data collected before 2011 are concerned by this filter. When the distance reported in the data was null, it was calculated from: - the ground speed and the haul duration using the following formula: Distance (km) = Haul duration (h) * Ground speed (km/h); - the trawl coordinates if the ground speed and the haul duration were not filled in. The swept area was calculated from the wingspread (which depends on the fishing gear type) and the distance trawled: Swept area (km²) = Distance (km) * Wingspread (km) Densities were calculated on each trawl and year using the following computation: Density (number of items per km²) = ∑Number of items / Swept area (km²) Percentiles 50, 75, 95 & 99 were calculated taking into account data for all years. More information on data processing and calculation are detailed in the attached document. Warning: the absence of data on the map does not necessarily mean that they do not exist, but that no information has been entered in the Marine Litter Database for this area.