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Poster presented during the H2020 "MUSES" project stakeholder workshop ’Embracing opportunities – Ocean Multi-Use Action Plan development workshop’ (Venice - June 27th, 2018). The poster analyses the potential for development of Multi-Use in the Northern-Adriatic coastal waters by combining existing and innovative touristic services with other traditional economic sectors and assets on the area. Drivers, added values, barriers, and impacts of Multi-Use have been identified integrating desk analysis and stakeholders perception. The results show the existence of a good potential for Multi-Use development and Blue-Growth in the area, still limited by barriers, particularly in the field of legislation, administrative processes and stakeholders capacity. Needed actions at local and regional (sub-national) level are highlighted in order to exploit this potential.

BACKGROUND There is ample evidence for human alteration of Europe’s regional seas, particularly the enclosed or partly enclosed Baltic, Black, Mediterranean, and North Seas. Accounts of habitat and biodiversity loss, pollution, and the decline of fish stocks in these economically, socially, and ecologically important seas demonstrate unsustainable use of the marine environment. At the same time, there is an insufficient quantity and quality of information to enable purely evidence-based management of Europe’s seas despite this being a declared goal of many decisionmakers; for example, less than 10% of the deep sea has been systematically explored (UNEP 2006). Evidence-based management alone is rarely possible in situations with complex value-laden policy options (Greenhalgh and Russell 2009), and unfortunately, many of the most pervasive problems in the marine environment are “wicked” second-order problems (Jentoft and Chuenpagdee 2009): they are complex in nature and their management will often involve both winners and losers. Solutions to these problems involve less politically attractive, valuebased choices and may require long time lags before tangible results are observed. Fisheries management, habitat and species protection, competition for marine space, and invasive species are all examples of “wicked” problems. These are some of the biggest issues facing Europe’s seas and are the major focus of this article and Special Feature. For the first time in European history, most countries have adopted a common maritime policy (the 2007 Integrated Maritime Policy) and a legally binding environmental directive (the 2008 Marine Strategy Framework Directive [MSFD]). These comprehensive policy vehicles encompass, or closely interface with, more specific measures, such as the recently reformed Common Fisheries Policy, the Water Framework Directive, the Habitats and Birds Directive, and a number of targeted policy instruments that deal with aspects of pollution control and coastal zone management. The overall array of measures has the potential to ensure the sustainable use of Europe’s seas and the restoration of marine environments, but the pathway between the current situation and the implementation of an ecosystem approach to management (the aspiration of the European Commission; see Our Approach to Research) is fraught with “wicked” problems. Science can help society resolve these problems, but in many cases this requires the broad and integrative vision of Odum’s (1971) “macroscope” rather than trying to piece together an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle of discipline-focused information. This paper and the others in this Special Feature employ a systems approach. We describe the approach, how it can be applied practically, and some of the challenges in making it work. Though the work is based on research on Europe’s seas, it has much wider implications for regional seas throughout the world. OUR APPROACH TO RESEARCH ON MARINE SOCIALECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS The research described in this paper (and Special Feature) was conducted in the framework of the EU-FP7 funded project Knowledge-based Sustainable Management of Europe’s Seas (KnowSeas). The interdisciplinary research spanned 4 years and involved 33 institutions from 16 European countries (KnowSeas 2013). Its primary objective was to develop “a comprehensive scientific knowledge base and practical guidance for the application of the ecosystem approach to the sustainable development of Europe’s regional seas.” Given the knowledge gaps and uncertainties in the way Europe’s marine social-ecological systems function (e.g., unresolved causal links, poorly mapped habitats, nonlinear dynamics), an iterative approach to inquiry was adopted, based partly on the reasoning behind soft systems analysis (e.g., Checkland 2000).

In this paper, we discuss the importance of the efficient communication of science results to citizens across the world. In order for people to absorb information, we need to understand the principles and apply the best available means to facilitate the process of increasing global awareness of the changes. This explicitly applies to the verification of how we appeal to people with respect to various environmental issues and, hence, how we can modernize the educational approaches to challenge the global change. We state that, in order to follow the philosophy of sustainable development goals with respect to ocean issues, we need an attractive alternative to the existing areas of consumption. We also state that the ocean issues are at the core of any process aiming to secure sustainability. New methods and tools of education and scientific communication, especially those which are offered by non-formal approaches, are necessary, and we present here some of the activities of the EU4Ocean coalition as best practice examples.

Abstract Currently, in tropical regions such as the southern Gulf of Mexico (sGM), there are no legal guidelines for assessing the quality of the seafloor. We aim to determine whether the seafloor sustainability of the sGM is evenly distributed, based on pressures that human activities produce upon the marine coastal environment, represented by the water quality, sediment quality, and benthic fauna. We analysed physicochemical characteristics and benthic fauna at 183 sites, sampled during five annual surveys (rainy and dry seasons) in the sublittoral and bathyal zones. Socioeconomic indicators were obtained from official national censuses. We calculated a pressure index (PI) based on water quality, sediment quality, and socioeconomic indicators. PI values ranged from 1 to 2.67, with the highest values being observed at coastal sites. Our approach determined that the benthic quality in the study area was related to depth and oil industry influence and that the sGM's seafloor sustainability was unevenly distributed. For sustainability, we determined specific situations for each site or group of sites: (1) sensitive - sites with high benthic quality and low PI; (2) naturally variable - sites for which the poor benthic quality was not related to the PI; (3) degraded - sites with poor benthic quality and high PI; and (4) resilient - sites with good benthic quality and high PI. This differentiation in sustainability situations might be used as a reference for linking socioeconomic activities in the coasts with the ecological status of marine environments from shallow to deep.

Abstract This study combines state-of-the-art reanalyses such as the fifth-generation European Re-Analysis (ERA5) and the Ocean Reanalysis System 5 (ORAS5) with novel observational products to present an updated estimate of the coupled atmosphere–ocean–sea ice Arctic energy budget, including flux and storage terms covering 2001–17. Observational products provide independent estimates of crucial budget terms, including oceanic heat transport from unique mooring-derived data, radiative fluxes from satellites, and sea ice volume from merged satellite data. Results show that the time averages of independent estimates of radiative, atmospheric, and oceanic energy fluxes into the Arctic Ocean domain are remarkably consistent in the sense that their sum closely matches the observed rate of regional long-term oceanic heat accumulation of ~1 W m−2. Atmospheric and oceanic heat transports are found to be stronger compared to earlier assessments (~100 and ~16 W m−2, respectively). Data inconsistencies are larger when considering the mean annual cycle of the coupled energy budget, with RMS values of the monthly budget residual between 7 and 15 W m−2, depending on the employed datasets. This nevertheless represents an average reduction of ~72% of the residual compared to earlier work and demonstrates the progress made in data quality and diagnostic techniques. Finally, the budget residual is eliminated using a variational approach to provide a best estimate of the mean annual cycle. The largest remaining sources of uncertainty are ocean heat content and latent heat associated with sea ice melt and freeze, which both suffer from the lack of observational constraints. More ocean in situ observations and reliable sea ice thickness observations and their routinely assimilation into reanalyses are needed to further reduce uncertainty.

This study examines the impact of subsidies on the profitability and ecological stability of the North Sea fisheries over the past 20 years. It shows the negative impact that subsidies can have on both the biomass of important fish species and the possible profit from fisheries. The study includes subsidies in an ecosystem model of the North Sea and examines the possible effects of eliminating fishery subsidies.Hindcast analysis between 1991 and 2003 indicates that subsidies reduced the profitability of the fishery even though gross revenue might have been high for specific fisheries sectors. Simulations seeking to maximise the total revenue between 2004 and 2010 suggest that this can be achieved by increasing the effort of Nephrops trawlers, beam trawlers, and the pelagic trawl-and-seine fleet, while reducing the effort of demersal trawlers. Simulations show that ecological stability can be realised by reducing the effort of the beam trawlers, Nephrops trawlers, pelagic- and demersal trawl-and-seine fleets. This analysis also shows that when subsidies are included, effort will always be higher for all fleets, because it effectively reduces the cost of fishing.The study found that while removing subsidies might reduce the total catch and revenue, it increases the overall profitability of the fishery and the total biomass of commercially important species. For example, cod, haddock, herring and plaice biomass increased over the simulation when optimising for profit, and when optimising for ecological stability, the biomass for cod, plaice and sole also increased. When subsidies are eliminated, the study shows that rather than forcing those involved in the fishery into the red, fisheries become more profitable, despite a decrease in total revenue due to a loss of subsidies from the government.