NAUTILOS will fill in existing marine observation and modelling gaps through the development of a new generation of cost-effective sensors and samplers for physical (salinity, temperature), chemical (inorganic carbon, nutrients, oxygen), and biological (phytoplankton, zooplankton, marine mammals) essential ocean variables, in addition to micro-/nano-plastics, to improve our understanding of environmental change and anthropogenic impacts related to aquaculture, fisheries, and marine litter. Newly developed marine technologies will be integrated with different observing platforms and deployed through the use of novel approaches in a broad range of key environmental settings (e.g. from shore to deep-sea deployments) and EU policy-relevant applications: - Fisheries & Aquaculture Observing Systems, - Platforms of Opportunity demonstrations, - Augmented Observing Systems demonstration, - Demonstrations on ARGO Platform, - Animal-borne Instruments. The fundamental aim of the project will be to complement and expand current European observation tools and services, to obtain a collection of data at a much higher spatial resolution and temporal regularity and length than currently available at the European scale, and to further enable and democratise the monitoring of the marine environment to both traditional and non-traditional data users. The principles that underlie the NAUTILOS project will be those of the development, integration, validation and demonstration of new cutting-edge technologies with regards to sensors, interoperability and embedding skills. The development will always be guided by the objectives of scalability, modularity, cost-effectiveness and open-source availability of software and data products produced. NAUTILOS will also provide full and open data feed towards well-established portals and data integrators (EMODnet, CMEMS, JERICO).

The overall goal of MEESO is to quantify the spatio-temporal distributions of biomass, production and ecosystem role of mesopelagic resources and to assess options to sustainably manage and govern their exploitation. To reach this goal, MEESO will create new knowledge and data on the mesopelagic community, its biodiversity, drivers of its biomass, its role in carbon sequestration, its role in the oceanic ecosystem and its interactions with the epipelagic community which includes several important commercial fish stocks. Besides applying state of the art experimental and quantitative methods, MEESO will develop and implement new acoustic and trawling technologies necessary for the knowledge and data generation in relation to this largely unknown and remote part of marine ecosystems. MEESO includes a significant amount of in-kind financing for technology development and scientific surveys. MEESO will apply the new knowledge and data to determine the potential of the mesopelagic biomass to be sustainably exploited for products included in the human food chain. For the first time combining leading experts in science, engineering, fisheries and governance, MEESO will develop commercial fishing and processing technologies and mapping of contaminant and nutrient contents to explore the basis for a viable fishery and creation of jobs. Mesopelagic organisms represent one of the largest unexploited resource left in the world's oceans, with a recent biomass estimate at 10 billion metric tons. The new tools and technologies, as well as assessment and management roadmaps, developed in MEESO will establish the trade-offs between exploitation, sustainability and viability of the resource, and identify options for its governance.

One of today’s most pressing challenges is to safeguard the loss of ecosystem biodiversity and functioning, while simultaneously allowing for their exploitation by those who depend on their services, goods and benefits. In Europe, Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) is the main governance process to ideally integrate sustainability and exploitation. This requires tools and knowledge to align MSP and marine protected area (MPA) designation processes, which are lacking particularly regarding transboundary coordination and connectivity. Founded on a large amount of expertise and a solid theoretical basis, MarinePlan will co-develop with stakeholders a Decision Support System (DSS) for ecosystem-based maritime spatial planning (EB-MSP) together with best practice guidance to enhance the effectiveness of spatial conservation and restoration measures for marine biodiversity in European Seas. Tools will comprise operational criteria for ecologically or biologically significant marine areas (EBSA), enabling the allocation of conservation and restoration areas at various scales in complex sea areas with multiple uses, while including the effects of climate change. The DSS will be developed and applied at eight European planning sites, from coastal ecosystems to open ocean and the deep sea and from local to trans-boundary scales. Applying and validating the DSS will incorporate realistic planning scenarios, key action points to achieve the EU Biodiversity Strategy, and policy recommendations how to enhance EB-MSP implementation in European Seas. MarinePlan will communicate results to decision-makers at horizontal (between sectors) and vertical (from local to European) levels and enable the transfer of knowledge to areas in differing socio-ecological settings. The improved natural and social science base will ensure effective policymaking to support a greater coherence in implementing environmental policies as well as to enable streamlined planning for marine industries.