MEDSEALITTER

The project aims at networking representative MPAs, scientific organizations and environmental NGOs for developing, testing and applying efficient, easy to apply and cost-effective protocols to monitor and manage litter impact on biodiversity.

Partner: Cinque Terre National Park and Marine Protected Area - ITALY; ISPRA - Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research - ITALY; Legambiente ONLUS - ITALY; University of Barcelona - SPAIN; The École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) - FRANCE; MEDASSET - GREECE; University of Valencia - SPAIN; Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) - GREECE; EcoOcéan Institut - FRANCE; Capo Carbonara MPA Comune di Villasimius - ITALY; Municipality of Favignana - Managing Body of Egadi Islands Marine Protected Area - ITALY.

Project earliest start: November 1st 2016. Ending date: July 31th 2019.

Duration: 33 Months.

PROJECT SHORT DESCRIPTION:

Context

The Mediterranean Sea is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots but is also one of the most polluted seas worldwide. Marine litter is a global threat for living marine organisms. Over 260 species have so far been reported to ingest or become entangled in debris such as plastic, monofilament line, rubber and aluminium foil (Bjorndal et al., 1994; Derraik, 2002). For the organisms involved, this results in impaired movement and feeding, reduced reproductive output, lacerations, ulcers, and death (Derraik 2002; Laist 1997, Camedda et al., 2014; de Lucia et al., 2014). The problem particularly affects fishes (Boerger et al., 2010), birds (van Franeker et al., 2011), cetaceans (de Stephanis et al., 2013) and marine turtles (Tomas et al., 2002; Lazar and Gracan, 2011; Campani et al., 2013; Camedda et al. 2014; Schuyler et al. 2014), animals in whose digestive tracts commonly appear accidentally-swallowed micro and macro plastic debris.

Taking this into account, the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the the Barcelona Convention  EcAp initiative consider marine litter as one of the most concerning causes of pollution of the sea and states that the Good Environmental State/Ecological objective, is reached when “properties and quantities of marine litter do not cause harm to the coastal and marine environment”; member states are asked to monitor effects of measures aiming to decrease  trend in the number/amount of marine litter items in the water surface.

However, assessment of the distribution and degree of this type of pollution is complex because the size of the litter may range from several meters in size to only few microns, and because some monitoring tools may be feasible and cost-effective in certain environments but not in others. This explains the lack of widely-accepted protocols to assess pollution by marine litter and the requirement for any protocol to be adapted to the specific scale and location of use in order to focus on effective mitigation measures and assess the effect of management actions.

Many national and international conventions and agreements point out the potential of networking Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) for addressing wide-scale marine topics, both by sharing information on a wider scale and by coordinating measures across many MPAs. Problems linked to marine biodiversity and threats could only approached at a broad scale, especially when addressing topics like marine contamination, pollution by plastics and other debris, and for monitoring macro fauna. A large -scale vision is therefore needed to protect MPAs which, given the nature of marine environments ,are not isolated from the surrounding context. on the other hand, MPAs are envisaged as becoming instrumental for the large scale conservation of the marine environment (see for example the SPAMI general principles). Long-term multidisciplinary collaborations are thus needed to achieve the ecosystem -based approach required by both ecological studies and the legislative framework. However, scaling up from the management of a single MPA to that of  a network of representative MPAs that act coherently to address problems at wide scale nowadays stands as a challenge for addressing the spatio-temporal dynamic scale of the processes involved.

Scales

Because marine litter is widespread within the Mediterranean and affects both the offshore bodies of water and the coastal fringe, and because the MPAs also vary in size, being from large regulated areas to small coastal reserves, the project will consider two spatial scales: the monitoring of large offshore bodies of water, and the monitoring of the local, coastal fringe of waters. Moreover, the extreme variation in shape and size of marine litter also demands a multiscale approach so that the protocols will be developed focusing both on the impact of macrolitter and microlitter.

The project, of multidisciplinary nature, will be performed taking advantage, and respecting the limitations, of the various MPAs and study areas. The selection of the MPAs has been made taking into account the diversity in size and fringe of waters encompassed by them as well as their capacity to networking. It is expected that the results will have large potential for application to those MPAs involved as well as to other Mediterranean MPAs. Although Many species may be selected as potentially indicative of pollution by marine litter, the present project will focus on both key indicative species that can be monitored cost-effectively, as well as on species already identified as being sensitive to this type of pollution and that can be sampled using non-invasive methods.

Aims

Following these considerations, the project proposes to network , within the Mediterranean basin, representative MPAs and scientific organizations for developing, testing and delivering efficient, easy to apply and cost-effective protocols to monitor and manage litter impact on biodiversity. Such protocols will be consistent and applicable at two-scale approach, large basin-wide and local within-MPA scales, and will have as target sensitive indicator species characteristic of the Mediterranean basin (e.g. squid eating marine mammal species, sea turtles, fishes and benthic invertebrates).

The project aims to:

• Intercalibrating  shared protocol for monitoring the effect of marine litter on Mediterranean biodiversity. This will consist in: studying, fine tuning and sharing common methodologies within a network of international MPAs with the objective of strengthening effective management within MPAs and by coordinating conservation measures across MPAs.
• Testing standardized protocols for monitoring marine litter abundance and impact through pilot studies conducted in different scenarios following the two scale approach described above :

1. large scale basin -wide monitoring of: i) macro litter using ship (ferries) and aircraft/drone surveys, and ii) the potential impact of both macro and micro litter on key marine species through the identification of risky areas for sensitive species, and  quantification of ingestion of litter by sea turtles;
2. Local MPAs scale monitoring of: i) macro litter using ship (commercial vessels and sailing boat surveys) and  aircraft/drone surveys, and ii) the potential impact of both macro and microlitter  on biota using as bio-indicators fishes and large polichaeta).

• Sharing the common methodology within a network of international MPAs for effective management of MPAs and by coordinating conservation measures across many MPAs.
• Contributing to the requirement of marine and biodiversity legislative framework.

Overall, the project aims at accomplishing and validating within the Mediterranean basin systematic protocols for monitoring one of the major polluters present in marine waters (marine litter) and its potential effect on key biodiversity species. The project endeavors to capitalize the potential of networking Marine Protected Areas, research organizations and NGOs for gathering information on a wide and local scale, coordinating measures across different international MPAs.