Sea bed sediment maps for the 4 marine sub-regions prepared as part of the initial evaluation of the MSFD (Marine Strategy Framework Directive).

Good Environmental Status assessment (GES) for descriptor 8 (contaminants, D8) of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) is reached when concentrations of contaminants are at levels not giving rise to pollution effects. It is described by 4 criteria among which the first one focus on the concentration of the contaminants in the environment (criteria 1 of the D8, D8C1). The environmental status for D8 in France includes assessment of contaminant concentrations in sediment, bivalves, fish, birds, mammals to cover the French marine area the continental shelf from the coast line). The 8 tables below present the assessment of the chemical contamination in sediment and bivalves on the coastal area of the 4 French marine subregions for D8 as part of the 2024 GES assessment. These tables report the status and temporal trends of each station x matrice x substance triplet in each of the 4 French marine subregions. Explanation on how to read the cells is given in the “read file”. The environmental assessment for D8 in France can be found in Mauffret al., 2023 (DOI:10.13155/97214). It includes 17 national indicator assessments, 4 OSPAR indicators and integrated assessment in selected assessment units at the level of the criteria 1 and 2. 

ROCCH, the French Chemical Contaminant Monitoring Network,  regularly provides a new official dataset for assessing the chemical quality status of French coastal waters. Concentrations of trace metal elements and organic compounds were measured in samples of marine surface sediments collected in the English Channel and Bay of Biscay, during 3 campaigns over a period of 6 years. Samples of fine sediment material, from 200 to 250 monitoring stations, were freeze-dried and sieved prior to analysis. The Results were submitted to the international database of ICES (for the OSPAR Convention).

This visualization product displays beaches locations where non-MSFD monitoring surveys, research & cleaning operations have been applied to collate data on macrolitter (> 2.5 cm). Reference lists associated with these protocols have been indicated with different colors in the map. 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 processing 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 surveys from non-MSFD 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. This list was created using EU Marine Beach Litter Baselines and EU Threshold Value for Macro Litter on Coastlines from JRC (these two documents are attached to this metadata). More information is available in the attached documents. Warning: the absence of data on the map doesn't necessarily mean that they don't exist, but that no information has been entered in the Marine Litter Database for this area.

EMODnet Chemistry aims to provide access to marine chemistry data sets and derived data products concerning eutrophication, ocean acidification and contaminants. The chemicals chosen reflect importance to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). This regional aggregated dataset contains all unrestricted EMODnet Chemistry data on contaminants; temperature, salinity and additional sampling parameters are included when available. The spatial coverage is the Mediterranean Sea with 10917 CDI records divided per matrices: 3095 water profiles and 1385 water timeseries, 1511 sediment profiles and 4083 sediment timeseries, 42 biota profiles and 801 biota timeseries. In the water datasets, the vertical profiles temporal range is from 1974-09-12 to 2015-12-11 and the timeseries temporal range is from 2006-08-17 to 2018-04-26. In the sediment datasets, vertical profiles temporal range is from 1971-01-12 to 2016-04-07 and time series temporal range is from 1981-06-27 to 2018-12-14. For the biota datasets, vertical profiles temporal range is from 2008-05-05 to 2013-05-22 and time series temporal range is from 1979-03-29 to 2017-03-15. Data were harmonised and quality controlled by ‘Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Hellenic National Oceanographic Data Centre (HCMR/HNODC)’ from Greece. Regional datasets concerning contaminants are automatically harvested. Parameter names in these datasets are based on P01, BODC Parameter Usage Vocabulary, which is available at: https://vocab.seadatanet.org/p01-facet-search. Each measurement value has a quality flag indicator. The resulting data collections for each Sea Basin are harmonised, and the collections are quality controlled by EMODnet Chemistry Regional Leaders using ODV Software and following a common methodology for all Sea Regions. Harmonisation means that: (1) unit conversion is carried out to express contaminant concentrations with a limited set of measurement units (according to EU directives 2013/39/UE; Comm. Dec. EU 2017/848) and (2) merging of variables described by different “local names” ,but corresponding exactly to the same concepts in BODC P01 vocabulary. Detailed documentation is available at: https://doi.org/10.6092/8b52e8d7-dc92-4305-9337-7634a5cae3f4 Explore and extract data at: https://emodnet-chemistry.webodv.awi.de/contaminants%3EMediterranean The harmonised dataset can also be downloaded as ODV spreadsheet (TXT file), which is composed of metadata header followed by tab separated values. This worksheet can be imported to ODV Software for visualisation (More information can be found at: https://www.seadatanet.org/Software/ODV ). The same dataset is offered also as TXT file in a long/vertical format, in which each P01 measurement is a record line. Additionally, there are a series of columns that split P01 terms in subcomponents (measure, substance, CAS number, matrix...).This transposed format is more adapted to worksheet applications users (e.g. LibreOffice Calc). The original datasets can be searched and downloaded from EMODnet Chemistry Chemistry CDI Data and Discovery Access Service: https://emodnet-chemistry.maris.nl/search

This product displays for Tributyltin, positions with values counts that have been measured per matrix and are present in EMODnet regional contaminants aggregated datasets, v2024. The product displays positions for all available years.

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 potential hazardous substances, despite the fact that some data might not be related to pollution (e.g. collected by deep corer). Temperature, salinity and additional parameters are included when available. It covers the Northeast Atlantic Ocean (40W). Data were harmonised and validated by '‘IFREMER / IDM / SISMER - Scientific Information Systems for the SEA’ in France. The dataset contains water (profiles), sediment (profiles and timeseries) and biota (timeseries). The temporal coverage is 1974–2018 for water measurements, 1966–2022 for sediment measurements and 1979–2023 for biota measurements. Regional datasets concerning contaminants are automatically harvested and the resulting collections are harmonised and validated using ODV Software and following a common methodology for all sea regions ( https://doi.org/10.6092/8b52e8d7-dc92-4305-9337-7634a5cae3f4 ). Parameter names are based on P01 vocabulary, which relates to BODC Parameter Usage Vocabulary and is available at: https://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/search_nvs/P01/ . The harmonised dataset can be downloaded as as an ODV spreadsheet, which is composed of a metadata header followed by tab separated values. This spreadsheet can be imported into ODV Software for visualisation (more information can be found at: https://www.seadatanet.org/Software/ODV ). In addition, the same dataset is offered also as a txt file in a long/vertical format, in which each P01 measurement is a record line. Additionally, there are a series of columns that split P01 terms into subcomponents (substance, CAS number, matrix...).This transposed format is more adapted to worksheet applications (e.g. LibreOffice Calc).

This product displays for Lead, positions with values counts that have been measured per matrix and are present in EMODnet regional contaminants aggregated datasets, v2024. The product displays positions for all available years.

This visualization product displays the total abundance of marine macro-litter (> 2.5cm) per beach per year from non-MSFD monitoring surveys, research & cleaning operations. 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 processing 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 surveys from non-MSFD 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. This list was created using EU Marine Beach Litter Baselines and EU Threshold Value for Macro Litter on Coastlines from JRC (these two documents are attached to this metadata). - Exclusion of surveys without associated length; - Normalization of survey lengths to 100m & 1 survey / year: in some case, the survey length was not 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, the median abundance for each beach and year is calculated from these normalized abundances per survey. Percentiles 50, 75, 95 & 99 have been calculated taking into account other sources data for all years. More information is available in the attached documents. Warning: the absence of data on the map doesn't necessarily mean that they don't exist, but that no information has been entered in the Marine Litter Database for this area.

This product displays for Benzo(a)pyrene, positions with values counts that have been measured per matrix and are present in EMODnet regional contaminants aggregated datasets, v2024. The product displays positions for all available years.