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Our planet is facing a critical challenge: climate change. This is caused by human activities that release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into Earth’s atmosphere. As temperatures rise and weather becomes more extreme, scientists are searching for solutions. Blue carbon ecosystems could be part of the answer! These ecosystems include mangrove forests, tidal marshes, and seagrass meadows—ocean and coastal ecosystems that capture and store carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere. In our research, we found that these ecosystems cover a huge area of Earth’s surface, up to the size of Mexico. They store a whopping 30 billion tons of carbon, which is huge! If we stop destroying blue carbon ecosystems and restore the ones we have lost, it could balance out 3% of the greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere. Pretty important, right! Overall, blue carbon ecosystems are nature’s heroes in the fight against climate change.

Abstract Animal-attached devices have transformed our understanding of vertebrate ecology. However, to be acceptable, researchers must minimize tag-related harm. The long-standing recommendation that tag masses should not exceed 3% of the animal’s body mass ignores tag forces generated by movement. We used collar-attached accelerometers on four free-ranging carnivores, spanning two orders of magnitude in mass, to reveal that during movement, forces exerted by ‘3%’ tags were generally equivalent to 4-19% of the animals’ masses, with a record of 54% in a hunting cheetah. Controlled studies on domestic dogs revealed how the tag forces are dictated by animal gait and speed but appear largely invariant of body mass. This fundamentally changes how acceptable tag mass limits should be determined, requiring cognizance of animal athleticism. One Sentence Summary There can be no universal rule for collar-tag masses as a percentage of carrier mass since tag forces depend on lifestyle.

Geopolitical shifts are fracturing global agendas, sidelining Sustainable Development Goals as well as climate and biodiversity commitments. This is especially risky for the ocean, a key climate regulator and biodiversity hub that has the potential to underpin a regenerative blue economy. In 2020, it generated US$2.6 trillion in goods and services, fed over three billion people, and absorbed a large share of CO₂ emissions and associated excess heat—yet faces accelerating degradation due to climate change, overexploitation, pollution, and weak governance. Amid global polarization, science remains open, multilateral, and vital to ocean stewardship. Scientific, Indigenous, and local knowledge systems—if adequately funded, integrated, and applied—can drive governance, innovation, and sustainability. Yet they remain somewhat disconnected from policy. This policy brief produced by the International Scientific Committee of the One Ocean Science Congress identifies concrete steps to link knowledge systems with decision-making and strengthen ocean health, resilience, and inclusive prosperity.

Anthropogenic impacts on marine ecosystems have led to a decline of biodiversity across the oceans, threatening invaluable ecosystem services on which we depend. Ecological temporal data to track changes in diversity are relatively rare, and the few long-term datasets that exist often only date back a few decades or less. Here, we use eDNA taken from dated sediment cores to investigate changes over approximately the last 100 years of metazoan communities in native (Cymodocea nodosa and Posidonia oceanica) and exotic (Halophila stipulacea) seagrass meadows within the eastern Mediterranean Sea, at two locations in Greece and two in Cyprus. Overall, metazoan communities showed a high turnover of taxa during the past century, where losses of individual taxa in a seagrass meadow were compensated by the arrival of new taxa, probably due to the arrival of exotic species introduced in the Mediterranean Sea from the Suez Canal or the Gibraltar Strait. Specifically, bony fishes (Class Actinopteri) and soft corals (Class Anthozoa) presented significantly higher richness in the past (before the 1980s) than in the most recent time periods (from 1980–2017) and some Cnidarian orders were solely found in the past, whereas sponges and Calanoids (Class Hexanauplia), an order of copepods, showed an increase in richness since the 1980s. Moreover, the Phyla Porifera, Nematoda and the Classes Staurozoa, Hydrozoa and Ophiuroidea were detected in P. oceanica meadows but not in C. nodosa and H. stipulacea, which led to P. oceanica meadows having twice the richness of other seagrasses. The greater richness resulted from the more complex habitat provided by P. oceanica. The combination of eDNA and sediment cores allowed us to reconstruct temporal patterns of metazoan community diversity and provides a novel approach to follow natural communities back in time in the absence of time series and baseline data. The ongoing loss of P. oceanica meadows, likely to be compounded with future warming, might lead to a major loss of biodiversity and the replacement by other seagrass species, whether native or exotic, does not compensate for the loss.

ABSTRACT Restoration efforts are urgently needed for the conservation of coral reefs. Among emerging tools, the use of probiotics has shown promise in laboratory settings for improving coral resilience, but their validation under real‐world reef conditions remains limited. Here, we present the Coral Probiotics Village (CPV) as a novel and fully operational underwater research laboratory and a testing ground designed to support the in situ testing of microbial‐based coral restoration interventions. This manuscript describes the design, establishment, and scientific validation of the CPV, including continuous environmental monitoring, a summary of previously developed pilot trials of probiotic applications, and an integration of sensor networks, AI‐assisted reef monitoring, and autonomous technologies. We propose the CPV as a scalable model for integrated coral restoration science and suggest its replication as a tool to accelerate applied reef conservation efforts globally.

The dataset reports 1) Bibliographic information of each original publication of exotic species impact; 2) number of replicates for controls and experimental treatments; 3) mean ± SD of control and experimental treatments; 4) Hedges’ g effect size and variation of impact; 5) Descriptive information of the recipient sites including latitude, longitude, depth; 6) Descriptive information of the study, including whether it was mensurative of manipulative in the field or laboratory, the level of organization of recorded impacts and the response variable; 7) Descriptive information of the exotic species, including species name, taxonomic group and trophic level; 8) Descriptive information on the recipient species, including taxonomic group and trophic level; 9) Thermal characterization of the recipient site; 10) Latitudinal and thermal characterization of the exotic species range of origin (RO); 11) Characterization of warming projections in the recipient site under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 projections.

MEPS Marine Ecology Progress Series Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsTheme Sections MEPS 218:95-106 (2001) - doi:10.3354/meps218095 Flow and particle distributions in a nearshore seagrass meadow before and after a storm T. C. Granata1,*, T. Serra2, J. Colomer2, X. Casamitjana2, C. M. Duarte1,**, E. Gacia1 1Centre d¹Estudis Avançats de Blanes, C. Santa Bàrbara s/n, 17300 Blanes (Girona), Spain 2Environmental Physics, Department of Physics, University of Girona, Campus de Montilivi, 17071 Girona, Spain Present addresses: *Ecological Engineering Program, The Ohio State University, CEEGS 470 Hitchcock Hall 2070 Neil Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43210-1275, USA.E-mail: granata@osu.edu **Instituto Mediterraneo de Estudios Avanzados, C. Valldemossa km 7.5, 07071 Palma de Mallorca, Spain ABSTRACT: Fine-scale spatial effects of a seagrass meadow on suspended particle transport were assessed from current speeds, orbital wave velocities, turbulent Reynolds stress, in situ particle concentrations, and sedimentation rates for a horizontal grid in a coastal seagrass (Posidonia oceanica) meadow at 2 depths and during low- and high-energy periods. For the low-energy period, the vertical reduction of the total kinetic energy, from 100 cm to ~ 10 cm above the bottom, was large in the meadow (up to 95%) than over the sand (35 to 75%). Velocity maps suggest that a recirculating flow formed in the meadow with a higher Reynolds stress at the edge of the meadow. Near the bed, concentrations of small particles (<10 µm diameter) were lower inside the meadow than over barren sand, while concentrations of large particles (>10 µm) were lower over the barren sand. For the period of stronger current and wave activity following a storm, nearbed turbulence and orbital wave velocity were elevated, though still lower inside the meadow than over the sand. For this high energy period, particle concentrations increased over the whole study area, but were still lowest deep inside the meadow. Overall, the horizontal spatial distribution of plants in the study area had a profound effect on the flow field and on vertical transport, even during the high-energy period. The reduced nearbed turbulence and lower sedimentation rate below the canopy confirms it as a calm zone with lower mixing compared to unvegetated areas. Erratum KEY WORDS: Seagrass meadow · Flow fields · Particle transport Full text in pdf format PreviousNextExport citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in MEPS Vol. 218. Online publication date: August 20, 2001 Print ISSN: 0171-8630; Online ISSN: 1616-1599 Copyright © 2001 Inter-Research.