The Arctic Ocean is experiencing an environmental state-change with expanding human activities ranging from commercial shipping and energy development to ship-based tourism. Accordingly, with involvement of indigenous peoples, Arctic and non-Arctic states have begun to develop national and international management regimes to address emerging issues, impacts and resources in the Arctic Ocean. In every case, there will be challenges to implement agreements in the face of political and financial constraints. "Pan-Arctic Options - Holistic Integration for Arctic Coastal- Marine Sustainability" is designed in an international, interdisciplinary and inclusive manner, involving cost-effective collaboration with currentlyfunded projects to contribute to informed decision-making by policy makers from government and industry. The core team includes natural and social scientists from Canada, China, France, Norway, Russia and the United States who will integrate document collections, geospatial data and stakeholder perspectives. This integrated decision-support tool will involve users in the co-design and co-production of options for both policy and built elements that are needed together for sustainable infrastructure development in the Arctic Ocean. A unique observational contribution from Pan- Arctic Options will be the analysis of Automatic Identification System (AIS) data of ship traffic across the Arctic Ocean collected from polar-orbiting satellites from 2009 forward. Results will be disseminated via journals (e.g., Science, Nature) and books as well as less-conventional methods involving facilitated dialogues in annual venues (e.g., Arctic Frontiers, Arctic Circle) and in the 2016 Arctic Expedition Summit involving the National Geographic Society and Google Ocean program. Management of this holistic project will be in the hands of a Steering Committee and an international Advisory Board involving global thought leaders and organizations (e.g., Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme), contributing to Arctic Ocean sustainability on a pan-Arctic scale.

Plastics debris pervades in our oceans and freshwater systems at an increasing accumulation rate. While identifying the major sources of plastics are critical, greater investigations on the plastic microbiome to characterize the whole microbial communities and putative plastic-degraders appear also essential. The major aim of MycoPLAST is thus to address the problematic of the fate of marine plastic litter which appears particularly relevant to the CES 04 “Scientific and technological innovations to support the ecological transition” as we will highlight specific microbial communities able to degrade plastics. The MycoPLAST proposal fits well with the CES associated keywords “bioremediation”, “ecological engineering”, “pollutant treatment”, “treatment of waste” and “pollution of waters”. In recent years, evidence has accumulated for the presence and activity of fungal communities in a wide variety of aquatic habitats. While numerous studies have provided evidence for metabolically active marine fungi, the extent to which they make a significant contribution to biogeochemical cycling of compounds, including pollutants, is still unknown. The overall aims of this proposal are to assess the diversity, activity and distribution of fungi associated with marine plastic debris samples and to evaluate, and possibly unleash, their ability to degrade complex plastic polymers. This will be achieved (i) by providing detailed information on the identity and environmental significance of fungi associated to a wide variety of plastic samples (retrieved from different aquatic habitats) using molecular marker gene analyses, (ii) by establishing an extensive collection of fungal isolates and by determining their ability to efficiently degrade plastic polymers, and (iii) by optimizing the utilization/degradation yield through microbial consortia, use of surfactants and constrained adaptation through iterative culturing. Our main hypothesis is that marine fungal communities represent an overlooked and untapped microbial component associated with marine plastic waste and that a better knowledge of their diversity, activity, functions and the exploration of their potential ability to degrade complex plastics could lead to efficient bioremediation applications in the current context of global threat to the planet and its inhabitants. Noteworthy, in addition to the access to a large collection of plastic samples from different marine locations, the proposed project will take advantage of a funded Tara Expedition starting in May 2019 for a “Tour of Europe”. During this expedition, having for theme ocean research and the preservation of the Ocean in the face of plastic pollution, “fresh” plastic samples (meso, micro and nanoplastics) will be collected and will also be accessible to the MycoPLAST project. The limited but nevertheless encouraging studies on these specific microorganisms clearly highlight the interest of this research topic, allowing to consider that the MycoPLAST project is highly original and will definitely lead to scientific breakthroughs and can be a first step towards standardized bioremediation approaches lowering plastic pollution in the Ocean through the bio-stimulation of specific marine microbial degraders.

Global change scenarios are invaluable to guide long-term strategic policies, prompt management actions and increase public awareness of future trends in biodiversity. Although the degree of realism of scenarios and marine ecosystem models developed in support of an ecosystem approach to fisheries has greatly improved, in most cases, the Darwinian evolution of fish populations is still neglected in future projections. Evidence indicates that populations adapt to global change, either via phenotypic plasticity or genetic processes, leading to modifications in their life-history and physiology. Such adaptation can mitigate the impacts of global change on fish populations and prevent their extirpation, an evolutionary rescue, but it can also push them towards evolutionary traps due to the erosion of their genetic diversity and thus reduction of their evolutionary potential and resilience. SOMBEE addresses the role of eco-evolutionary dynamics and their consequences for the sustainable exploitation of fish resources in the future. To this end, we will build and test scenarios of the combined pressure of fishing and climate change on both intra- and inter-specific marine biodiversity, by explicitly modelling the phenotypic plasticity of fish life-history traits, their selection and adaptive evolution, and their genetic drift for multiple interacting species. The objectives are to: i) develop a cutting edge evolutionary ecosystem model with primary focus on fish; ii) apply it to a set of 6 contrasting ecosystems to better understand the selective pressures exerted by fishing and climate change; iii) project future changes in intra- and inter-specific biodiversity and related fishing production and economic profit under combined climate and fishing scenarios and iv) quantify the synergistic and antagonistic ecological, evolutionary and economic impacts of these drivers. SOMBEE will advance knowledge on the capacity of fish communities to adapt to global change and our ability to forecast their persistence and the future sustainability of fisheries and food production.