Restoring and maintaining the resilience of the Black Sea ecosystem, while enabling a sustainable exploitation of its natural resources is vital. A better coordination and alignment of research and innovation efforts alongside developing improved knowledge base and joint infrastructures could substantially support this timely challenge. Towards this end the Burgas Vision Paper was produced, by an initiative supported by EC, as the key framework document for a shared vision for a productive, healthy, resilient, sustainable and better-valued Black Sea by 2030. It addresses the four key pillars on which a new Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) and its Implementation Plan can be built on: (1) Addressing fundamental Black Sea research challenges, (2) Developing products, solutions and clusters underpinning Black Sea Blue Growth, (3) Building of critical support systems and innovative Infrastructures, (4) Education and capacity building. Building on this recently emerging policy framework, the core contribution of the Black Sea CONNECT CSA will be to scientifically, technically and logistically support the Black Sea Blue Growth Initiative towards the implementation of the Burgas Vision Paper, with a view on boosting the blue economy in the region. The overall objective is to coordinate the development of the SRIA and its implementation plan both at national and regional level. The SRIA and its implementation plan will guide stakeholders from academia, funding agencies, industry, policy and society to address together the fundamental Black Sea challenges, to promote blue growth and economic prosperity of the Black Sea region, to build critical support systems and innovative research infrastructure and to improve education and capacity building. The project will support the design of synergistic activities such as developing an operational network of funders, new transnational joint activities and achieving the knowledge transfer.

SEAwise will address the key challenge preventing implementation of a fully operational European Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management: the need to increase fisheries benefits while reducing ecosystem impact under environmental change and increasing competition for space. The SEAwise network of stakeholders, advisory bodies and scientists will co-design key priorities and approaches to provide an open knowledge base on European Social-Ecological Fisheries Systems. SEAwise will innovate the prediction of social indicators of small-scale fisheries, coastal communities, carbon footprint and human health benefits. Using these indicators in fisheries models will help give advice on economically effective and socially acceptable governance under climate change, productivity changes, and the landing obligation. SEAwise will link the first ecosystem-scale assessment of maritime activities’ impacts on habitats with the fish stocks they support. Using ecosystem effects on fishing, including environmental metrics, density dependence, predation, stock health indicators and habitat extent will improve stock productivity predictions. Estimating effects of fishing on sensitive species, benthic habitats, food webs, biodiversity and litter allows evaluation of the mutual consistency of objectives for ecological and social systems. Multispecies-multifleet models will provide ecosystem forecasts of the effect of fisheries management measures. SEAwise will identify the simplest possible combination of management measures and investigate portfolio diversification as an approach for managing ecosystem resilience and climate adaptation. SEAwise tools and courses for ICES, GFCM, stakeholders and decision makers will ensure that these methods can be used directly in Mediterranean, western European, North Sea and Baltic Sea waters. The predictions will inform an online advice tool highlighting stock- and fisheries-specific social and ecological effects and management trade-offs.

The aim of the MRSEI-CLIMAQS project is to set up a network of partners to prepare a project in response to the "HORIZON-CL6-2024-FARM2FORK-02-7-two-stage: Minimising climate impact on aquaculture: mitigation and adaptation solutions for future climate regimes" call for projects, which is of the "Innovative Action" type. Two projects will be funded for an overall budget of 9 million euros, and we would like to request 4.5 million euros for our CLIMAQS proposal. The evaluation will take place in two stages, the first of which will be blind, with a submission date of February 22, 2024. For the second stage, the complete project must be submitted by September 17, 2024. The CLIMAQS consortium plans to deploy multiple solutions around 6 workpackages to address the challenges of aquaculture in the context of climate change. The workpackages include solutions for diversification (WP1), innovative aquaculture systems and IMTA (Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture, WP2), genetic selection (WP3), species nutrition (WP4), environmental monitoring and risk prevention (WP5) and aquaculture spatial planning (WP6). The various solutions proposed by the project partners will be tested through the implementation of case studies, and evaluated in terms of circular economy, economic, social and environmental sustainability, notably through socio-economic assessments (SHS) and life-cycle analyses in a 7th workpackage (WP7). The consortium currently comprises 7 organizations from 5 different European countries, with the French partner acting as coordinator. The coordinating group, comprising two researchers and a project engineer, has already been involved in a number of European projects at various levels of responsibility. More generally, the partners already identified are currently collaborating or have already collaborated in several European projects. However, to test and evaluate certain solutions, the network has identified a lack of skills in socio-economics, sociology, sustainable development and spatial planning, which we are seeking to identify and involve in our European project as part of this proposal to set up a European network. CLIMAQS will be designed to contribute to the expectations of the targeted call (Expected outcomes) and to the broader objectives (Expected impacts) of Cluster 6's Destination "Fair, healthy and environment-friendly food systems from primary production to consumption". The consortium has already identified a number of scientific and technical spin-offs, as well as economic, social, public policy and public perception impacts. Target groups have been identified, including aquaculture businesses, associations of professionals, environmental monitoring agencies, local authorities, European and national political players, civil society and consumers, and the scientific community. Indicators to measure these benefits are planned. All of this will be developed and specified in the plan for disseminating, exploiting and communicating the project's results. Following an initial video conference meeting in May 2023, two further face-to-face meetings are planned, mainly to optimize relations between partners and workpackages, the budget, and finalize the writing of the project to be submitted in February 2024. Expenditure for these two events is the most significant (missions, room hire and catering), to which have been added the costs of proofreading documents by an English-speaking scientist and the production of iconographies.

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive requires member states of the European Union to achieve or maintain a good ecological status of the marine environment by 2020. Achieving and maintaining this good ecological status requires an assessment of the marine environment. A major bottleneck resides in the often complex, time consuming, and expensive methods which are involved to achieve this objective. In this context, the ambition of this project, SPECTROBS, is to develop alternative and innovative tools, simple, rapid, and inexpensive, to assess health status of sentinel marine organisms, the marine mussel (Mytilus spp.), based on the use of spectroscopy associated with chemometric treatments. Chronic exposures will be carried out to assess the effects of environmental stressors, i.e. the temperature, the pH and environmentally relevant doses of cadmium or perfluorinated compounds, in microcosms, using Mytilus spp. as biologic model. Raman and near infrared spectra will be recorded on shell, fresh and/or dried tissues (muscle, gills, digestive glands). A multi-scale approach will be performed, first by analyzing sub-individual biochemical biomarkers: oxidative stress, cell metabolism, neurotoxicity, immunotoxicity, and lipid storage combined to lipidomics to determine potential perturbations of the core and lipid metabolism. Secondly, at the individual scale, feeding activities such as clearance and ingestion, associated with an anatomo-functional approach (ciliature) will be investigated. In case of exposure involving the chemicals, the bioaccumulation will be measured. This first part of the project will rely on the integration of the whole results to elucidate the mechanisms of action of the stressors, characterize the health status of exposed mussels, and generate spectral and biological data needed for the next steps of the project. Chemometric tools will be employed to supervise data analysis. The aim will be to identify the relation between spectroscopic signals and the individual modification of the mussels, depending on the exposure. From the experimental results, full spectra or selected regions and effect data of exposed mussels constituting calibration samples, will be used to build models. Finally, the model performance will be evaluated using other sampled mussels, constituting the prediction set. The prediction of mussel health from spectral data constitutes the final objective of the laboratory experiments. The final part of the project will be devoted to assess the application of the prediction models of mussel health for the field. Tested samples will be caged mussels in different locations along the Atlantic coast with contrasted environmental pressures. Since mussels are good bioindicators of environmental quality, the battery of biomarkers and spectral acquisitions will be implemented. By doing so, the prediction models will be validated for a potential use in environmental conditions. The SPECTROBS project is proposed for 42 months by the leader Aurore Zalouk-Vergnoux and a consortium organized with 3 main complementary partners from Nantes Université and IFREMER. It corresponds to associate professors, professors, and researchers with complementary skills: chemists, biochemists, biologists and ecotoxicologists, to lead to success the multidisciplinary and integrated approach proposed in the project. The requested funds to the ANR reaches 447.7 k€. The results will be valorised through scientific publications, participations to congresses. Attention will be paid to information diffusion to stakeholders and students. The developed methods could be used for diagnostics on marine environmental quality assessments, which is faced to global warming, acidification and chemical anthropogenic releases.

Biodiversity is influenced by a wide range of external environmental pressures. Some direct impacts are easy to observe, whereas others are far less obvious and therefore more difficult to understand. In 2008, the EC estab-lished a framework for community action in the field of marine environmental policy regarding biodiversity: the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, MSFD, which defines a series of 11 qualitative descriptors of Good Envi-ronmental Status (GES). A range of specific pressures are treated within these separate descriptors but most also impact biodiversity in some way. A knowledge-based monitoring strategy is then recommended. Targets for ac-ceptable status, or “GES”, must be set according to the conditions relevant to each area. The overall aim of the Marine Directive is to achieve a sustainable balance between human needs and the natural environment across the European seas. Monitoring all aspects of biodiversity across the whole European seas is neither possible nor an acceptable use of resources. The ecological, socio-economical and patrimonial importance of the Mediter-ranenan coralligenous ecosystem and its variability all around the Mediterranean Sea give the highest priority to its knowledge, understanding and protection for a sustainable use. Moreover, as a coastal system, it is under endlessly increasing pressures. Its complexity and richness of the associated fauna are potential sources for numerous indicators. CIGESMED will design some new tools based on coralligenous for this perspective. Biologically mediated habitats are structured formations on a seafloor provided by marine living organisms alone (often engineer species) or incrusted by inorganic materials of biogenic origin. These habitats can be built by multi-layered aggregations of organisms to form meadows, colonies, banks or beds, mosaics and patches or accumulations of hard structural elements. These complex biological habitats offer a range of favorable hiding places, are vital reproduction and nursery areas, have protein-rich and easily accessible food resources for ben-thic invertebrates and fish, and are easily exploited by humans due to their high biodiversity and species richness. In the Mediterranean Sea, coralligenous and Posidonia meadows are the most important biologically me-diated habitats. They are the main milieu to generate the structural complexity and biodiversity, as well as for the functioning of these ecosystems. Posidonia meadows were extensively studied whereas coralligenous which is a typical hard bottom Mediterranean underwater seascape is comparatively less so. Feldmann (1937) was the first to unequivocally describe the algal composition of the coralligenous and identify the main calcareous algae mak-ing the coralligenous assemblages. Two main different morphologies are traditionally described: banks, over more or less horizontal substrates, and rims, in the outer parts of marine caves and vertical cliffs (Natura 2000 – sheet 1170.14, Barcelona Convention 2007, IV.3.1). This typical coastal benthic Mediterranean environment lies, de-pending of light conditions, from ca. 15 to 130 m depth. It expands in the circalittoral zone and also develops in the infralittoral zone. These assemblages are one of the most important hot-spots of species diversity in the Mediterranean, together with Posidonia oceanica meadows but which are by far more studied. As mentioned by a recent Mediterranean Action Plan-MAP’ working group13, even if an overall knowledge about its composition and distribution in the NW-Mediterranean basin, the distribution of coralligenous populations (lack of maps), their structuring, functioning and threats are important lacunae from the conservation point of view.