The metabolism of heterotrophic bacteria acts as a key control on the turnover of organic matter in the ocean. However, much remains unknown about how nutrient availability, particularly iron concentration, impacts bacterial growth. In the dimly lit waters of the lower photic and upper mesopelagic zones, the attenuation of sinking particulate flux is intense, due in part to remineralization by heterotrophic bacteria. In the No...

Mortality resulting from interactions with fishing gears represent an important threat to sensitive species globally. In this study, we address this issue by defining five species groups of marine megafauna (marine mammals, seabirds, demersal and pelagic elasmobranchs, and sea turtles), and conducting a productivity-susceptibility analysis (PSA) within the context of data-limited fisheries in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. A...

Mesoscale eddies cause deviations from the background physical and biogeochemical states of the oligotrophic oceans, but how these perturbations manifest in microbial ecosystem functioning, such as community macromolecular composition or carbon export, remains poorly characterized. We present comparative lipidomes from communities entrained in two eddies of opposite polarities (cyclone–anticyclone) in the North Pacific Subtrop...

Pots are traditional fishing gear type largely employed in Mediterranean Small Scale Fisheries (SSFs). Their often higher species selectivity and catch quality compared to other gear types such as passive set nets or trawls are appealing characteristics for reducing the impact on benthic communities and diversifying fishing effort in the region. Despite this, in some SSFs, pots are still rarely used as prevalent gear due to lo...

The Mediterranean Large Elasmobranchs Monitoring (MEDLEM) database contains over 3000 records (more than 4000 individuals) of large elasmobranch species from 20 different countries around the Mediterranean and Black seas, observed from 1666 to 2017. The main species included in the archive are the devil fish (1 813 individuals), the basking shark (939 individuals), the blue shark (585 individuals) and the great white shark (33...