This visualization product displays the density of floating micro-litter per net normalized per km² per year 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 sampled according to research and monitoring protocols as MSFD monitoring. Densities were calculated for each net using the following calculation: Density (number of particles per km²) = Micro-litter count / (Sampling effort (km) * Net opening (cm) * 0.00001) When information about the sampling effort (km) was lacking and point coordinates were known (start and end of the sampling), the sampling effort was calculated using the PostGIS ST_DistanceSpheroid function with a WGS84 measurement spheroid. When the number of micro-litters or the net opening was not filled, it was not possible to calculate the density. Percentiles 50, 75, 95 & 99 have been calculated taking into account data for all years. 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.

This visualization product displays the spatial distribution of the sampling effort (based on the start position of the sampling tow) over the six-years' period 2017-2022 from other specific 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 a very specific protocol such as the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR) or Oceaneye. The spatial distribution was then determined by calculating the number of times each cell was sampled during the period 2017-2022, only taking into account the start position of the tows. The corresponding total distance (kms) sampled in each cell is also provided in the attribute table. Information on data processing and calculation are detailed in the attached methodology 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 National Oceanographic Data Centre (NODC) for this area. This work is based on the work presented in the following scientific article: O. Gerigny, M. Brun, M.C. Fabri, C. Tomasino, M. Le Moigne, A. Jadaud, F. Galgani, Seafloor litter from the continental shelf and canyons in French Mediterranean Water: Distribution, typologies and trends, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 146, 2019, Pages 653-666, ISSN 0025-326X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.07.030.

In order to better characterize the population structure of common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) in the Bay of Biscay, a single digest RADseq (SbfI enzyme) protocol was used to obtain paired-end, 150bp NGS sequences on the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 sequencing platform. D. delphis samples from the Western North Atlantic, and samples from three other delphinid species were included as outgroups.

This visualization product displays the cigarette related items abundance of marine macro-litter (> 2.5cm) per beach per year from Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) monitoring surveys without UNEP-MARLIN data. 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; - Selection of cigarette related items only. The list of selected items is attached to this metadata. 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); - Exclusion of surveys referring to the UNEP-MARLIN list: the UNEP-MARLIN protocol differs from the other types of monitoring in that cigarette butts are surveyed in a 10m square. To avoid comparing abundances from very different protocols, the choice has been made to distinguish in two maps the cigarette related items results associated with the UNEP-MARLIN list from the others; - Normalization of survey lengths to 100m & 1 survey / year: in some case, 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 cigarette related items of the survey (normalized by 100 m) = Number of cigarette related items of the survey x (100 / survey length) Then, this normalized number of cigarette related items is summed to obtain the total normalized number of cigarette related items for each survey. Finally, the median abundance of cigarette related items for each beach and year is calculated from these normalized abundances of cigarette related items per 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. Percentiles 50, 75, 95 & 99 have been calculated taking into account cigarette related items from MSFD monitoring data (excluding UNEP-MARLIN protocol) for all years. 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 visualization product displays the spatial distribution of seafloor litter density 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 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) Then a grid with 30km x 30km cells was used to calculate the weighted mean of densities in each cell from the formula : Weighted mean (number of items per km²) = ∑ (Distance (km) * Density (number of items per km²)) / ∑ Distance (km) 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 methodology 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. This work is based on the work presented in the following scientific article: O. Gerigny, M. Brun, M.C. Fabri, C. Tomasino, M. Le Moigne, A. Jadaud, F. Galgani, Seafloor litter from the continental shelf and canyons in French Mediterranean Water: Distribution, typologies and trends, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 146, 2019, Pages 653-666, ISSN 0025-326X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.07.030.

This visualization product displays the density of floating micro-litter per net normalized in grams per km² per year from specific protocols different 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 sampled according to a very specific protocol such as the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR) or Oceaneye. Densities were calculated for each net using the following calculation: Density (weight of particles per km²) = Micro-litter weight / (Sampling effort (km) * Net opening (cm) * 0.00001) When the weight of microlitters or the net opening was not filled, it was not possible to calculate the density. Percentiles 50, 75, 95 & 99 have been calculated taking into account data for all years. 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 and contaminants. 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 on eutrophication and acidity, and covers the Northeast Atlantic Ocean (40W). Data were aggregated and quality controlled by 'IFREMER / IDM / SISMER - Scientific Information Systems for the SEA' in France. 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 . Regional datasets concerning eutrophication and acidity 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/ . 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 also be downloaded as an ODV collection and spreadsheet, which is composed of a metadata header followed by tab separated values. This spreadsheet can be imported to ODV Software for visualisation (more information can be found at: https://www.seadatanet.org/Software/ODV ).

This visualization product displays the type of litter in percent per net per year from specific protocols different 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 sampled according to a very specific protocol such as the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR) or Oceaneye. To calculate percentages for each type, formula applied is: Type (%) = (∑number of particles of each type)*100 / (∑number of particles of all type) When the number of micro-litters was not filled or was equal to zero, it was not possible to calculate the percentage. Standard vocabularies for micro-litter types are taken from Seadatanet's H01 library (https://vocab.seadatanet.org/v_bodc_vocab_v2/search.asp?lib=H01). Some morphological types of micro-litters may have been sampled but were not defined by the protocole applied during the survey. They are represented as « undefined micro-litter items ». Warnings: - 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. - since 03/07/2023, the preferred label « Undefined micro-litter items » has been integrated into the H01 library whereas the labels « microplastic items », « non-plastic man-made micro-particles (e.g. glass, metal, tar) » and «non-plastic filaments (natural fibres, rubber) » have been deprecated. When defined, the material or polymer type can be checked directly in the source data.

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.

In October 2019 we chose 15 sites from the 2019 EVHOE survey for environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling. The French international EVHOE bottom trawl survey is carried out annually during autumn in the BoB to monitor demersal fish resources. At each site, we sampled seawater using Niskin bottles deployed with a circular rosette. There were nine bottles on the rosette, each of them able to hold ∼5 l of water. At each site, we first cleaned the circular rosette and bottles with freshwater, then lowered the rosette (with bottles open) to 5 m above the sea bottom, and finally closed the bottles remotely from the boat. The 45 l of sampled water was transferred to four disposable and sterilized plastic bags of 11.25 l each to perform the filtration on-board in a laboratory dedicated to the processing of eDNA samples. To speed up the filtration process, we used two identical filtration devices, each composed of an Athena® peristaltic pump (Proactive Environmental Products LLC, Bradenton, Florida, USA; nominal flow of 1.0 l min–1 ), a VigiDNA 0.20 μm filtration capsule (SPYGEN, le Bourget du Lac, France), and disposable sterile tubing. Each filtration device filtered the water contained in two plastic bags (22.5 l), which represent two replicates per sampling site. We followed a rigorous protocol to avoid contamination during fieldwork, using disposable gloves and single-use filtration equipment and plastic bags to process each water sample. At the end of each filtration, we emptied the water inside the capsule that we replaced by 80 ml of CL1 conservation buffer and stored the samples at room temperature following the specifications of the manufacturer (SPYGEN, Le Bourget du Lac, France). We processed the eDNA capsules at SPYGEN, following the protocol proposed by Polanco-Fernández et al., (2020). Half of the extracted DNA was processed by Sinsoma using newly developped ddPCR assays for European seabass (Dicentrachus labrax), European hake (Merluccius merluccius) and blackspot seabream (Pagellus bogaraveo).  The other half of the extracted DNA was analysed using metabarcoding with teleo primer. The raw metabarcoding data set is available at https://www.doi.org/10.16904/envidat.442 Bottom trawling using a GOV trawl was carried out before or after water sampling. The catch was sorted by species and catches in numbers and weight were recorded. No blackspot seabream individuals were caught.   Data content: * ddPCR/: contains the ddPCR counts and DNA concentrations for each sample and species. * SampleInfo/: contains the filter volume for each eDNA sample. * StationInfo/: contains metadata related to the data collected in the field for each filter. * Metabarcoding/: contains metabarcoding results for teleoprimer. * Trawldata/: contains catch data in numbers and weight (kg).