Publications

Over the past few decades, substantial funding has been directed towards improving scientific understanding and management of impacts of climate change in the marine environment. Following concerns that the key messages from these studies were not reaching the public, a comprehensive opinion poll of 10,000 European citizens in 10 countries was conducted to establish levels of awareness, concern, and trust among different demographic groups (by age, gender, proximity to the coast) and nationalities. Citizens exhibited varying levels of self-declared 'informedness' and concern. Citizens from Germany, Italy and Spain claimed to be the most informed on marine climate change issues; those from Czech Republic, Netherlands and Estonia claimed to be least informed. Respondents were least aware of ocean acidification and most aware of melting sea ice, pollution and overfishing. Citizens of Italy suggested that they were generally most concerned about marine climate change issues. Respondents from coastal areas claimed to be both more informed and more concerned than those living inland, as did females and older age groups (54-64 years). European citizens obtain information about climate change in the seas and ocean from different sources, particularly television and the internet. Trust in the various media sources varies among countries and demographic groups. Television is trusted most in Estonia, Germany and Ireland and least in France. The internet is trusted most in Italy, Czech Republic and Estonia, but least in France and the United Kingdom. 18-24 year olds are the biggest users of the internet, but trust this source less than older age groups. Academic scientists or those working for environmental NGOs are trusted more than scientists working for government or industry. Citizens from France are more trusting of industry than any other country polled. In terms of policy actions, most respondents highlighted mitigation measures as opposed to local-scale adaptation. Younger participants prioritised actions associated with reducing carbon emissions, whereas older age groups prioritised improving coastal defences. Successful adaptation to the impacts of climate change requires public engagement and support for policy decisions, and the use of different approaches to take account of differences among demographic groups and nationalities.

OPINION article Front. Mar. Sci., 19 November 2020Sec. Global Change and the Future Ocean Volume 7 - 2020 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.603651

Amylin is part of the endocrine pancreatic system that contributes to glycemic control, regulating blood glucose levels. However, human amylin has a high tendency to aggregate, forming isolated amylin deposits that are observed in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. In search of new inhibitors of amylin aggregation, we undertook the chemical analyses of five marine macroorganisms encountered in high populations in the Red Sea and selected a panel of 10 metabolites belonging to different chemical classes to evaluate their ability to inhibit the formation of amyloid deposits in the human amylin peptide. The thioflavin T assay was used to examine the kinetics of amyloid aggregation, and atomic force microscopy was employed to conduct a thorough morphological examination of the formed fibrils. The potential ability of these compounds to interact with the backbone of peptides and compete with β-sheet formation was analyzed by quantum calculations, and the interactions with the amylin peptide were computationally examined using molecular docking. Despite their structural similarity, it could be observed that the hydrophobic and hydrogen bond interactions of pyrrolidinones 9 and 10 with the protein sheets result in one case in a stable aggregation, while in the other, they cause distortion from aggregation.

Anthropogenic litter density and composition data were obtained by conducting aerial surveys on 44 beaches along the Saudi Arabian Coast of the Red Sea [1]. The aerial surveys were completed with commercial drones of the DJI Phantom suite flown at a 10 m altitude. The stills have a resolution of less than 0.5 cm pixels−1, hence, litter objects of few centimetres like bottle caps are easily detectable in the drone images. We here provide a subsample of the drone images acquired. To spare the time needed to visually count the litter objects in the thousands of drone images acquired, these were automatically screened using an object detection algorithm, specifically a Faster R-CNN, able to perform a binary classification in litter and non-litter and to categorize the objects in classes. The multi-class classification, however, is a challenging problem and, hence, it was conducted only on the 15 beaches that showed the highest performance after the binary classification. The performance of the algorithm was calculated by visually screening a subsample of images and it was used to correct the output of the Faster R-CNN. The described steps allowed to obtain an estimate of the litter density in 44 beaches and the litter composition in 15 beaches. By multiplying the relative abundance of each litter class and the median weight of objects belonging to each class, we obtained an estimate of the total mass of plastic beached on 15 beaches. Possible predictors of litter density and mass are the population and marine traffic densities at the site, the exposure of the beach to the prevailing wind and the wind speed, the fetch length and the presence of vegetation where litter could get trapped. Making such raw data (i.e. litter density and composition and their predictors) available can help building the base for a robust global estimate of anthropogenic litter in coastal environments and it is particularly important if data regards an understudied region like the Arabian Peninsula. Moreover, we share a subsample of the original drone images to allow usage from stakeholders.

This note aims to report the first recapture of a nesting green turtle (Chelonia mydas) in the Al Wajh lagoon, originally observed, and tagged while nesting in August 2021; and subsequently found in August 2024 under similar conditions. The turtle was first labelled with a flipper tag and satellite-tagged as part of a long-term monitoring effort to assess the post-nesting migratory movements and habitat use of marine turtles in the Red Sea. The recapture in 2024 represents the first record of this nature within Al Wajh Lagoon, specifically at Breem1 Island. This note provides insights into the green turtle growth, site fidelity, and remigration interval. Such findings contribute to the understanding of green turtle behavior, inform general population assessments, and confirm the importance of long-term marine turtle conservation strategies in the region.

Concern about future supplies of fresh water to society, to meet the full range of human needs, now comes very high on the priority list of global societal issues. An overarching issue, which this book addresses, is whether global climate change is a dominant driver of change in the structure and function of all natural water-based ecosystems, or whether direct human population growth and accelerated consumption are playing an equal or greater role. This book divides the whole aquatic realm into 21 ecosystems, from those on land (both saline and fresh water) to those of the open and deep oceans. It draws on the understanding of leading ecologists to summarize the state and likely condition by the year 2025 of each of the ecosystems. Written for academic researchers and environmental professionals, the aim is to put the climate change debate into a broader context as a basis for conservation science and planning.

In coastal areas around the world, the dominant primary producers are benthic macrophytes, including seagrasses and macroalgae, that provide habitat structure and food for diverse and abundant populations and communities, and drive ecosystem processes. Seagrass meadows and macroalgal forests are economically central to coastal human communities, particularly in the developing world, contributing to fisheries yield, storm protection, blue carbon storage, and important cultural values. These services are threatened worldwide by human activities, with substantial areas of seagrass and kelp forests lost over the last half-century. Tracking status and trends in marine macrophyte cover and quality is an emerging priority for ocean and coastal management, but doing so has been challenged by limited coordination across the numerous efforts to monitor macrophytes, which vary widely in goals, methodologies, scales, capacity, governance approaches, and data availability. Here, we present a consensus assessment and recommendations on the current state of and opportunities for advancing global marine macrophyte observations, integrating contributions from a community of researchers with broad geographic and disciplinary expertise. The time is ripe to harmonize marine macrophyte observations by building on existing networks and identifying a core set of common metrics and approaches in sampling design, field measurements, taxonomy, governance, capacity building, and data management. A global macrophyte observation community would then be facilitated by ensuring rigorous documentation, archiving and open-access sharing of protocols and resources at all stages of workflow, from field surveys to data management, and provision of open-access data. Realizing these recommendations will produce more effective, efficient, and responsive observing, a more accurate global picture of change in macrophyte systems, and stronger international capacity for sustaining observations.