Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs), introduced by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), refer to areas outside formal protected-area networks that deliver effective and enduring in situ biodiversity conservation. This scoping review systematically examined global approaches to identifying and evaluating potential OECMs. Analysing 99 studies covering 694 case studies and 237 000 potential sites, we...

Mediterranean elasmobranchs are experiencing significant declines due to intense fishing activities, making the region a global hotspot for elasmobranch conservation concerns. These declines are worsened by limited fisheries data, constraining stock assessments and evidence‐based management. Demographic models based on life history parameters (e.g., survival rate, age‐at‐maturity, litter size and longevity) offer critical alte...

Elasmobranch species are the direct or accidental catch of fisheries and can have a commercial importance. In the Mediterranean Sea, a long-term period of overfishing brought several demersal elasmobranchs to be depleted and threatened by extinction, due to vulnerability related to their life history traits. In such exploited species, information on genetic diversity and connectivity is lacking and should be collected to ident...

Climate change significantly impacts marine ecosystems worldwide, leading to alterations in the composition and structure of marine communities. In this study, we aim to explore the effects of temperature on demersal fish communities in the Central Mediterranean Sea, using data collected from a standardized monitoring program over 23 years. Computationally efficient Bayesian inference is performed using the integrated nested L...

Fishery is one of the most impacting human activities and is responsible for habitat loss in marine systems. While the effects of large‐scale fisheries have been largely investigated, impacts of small‐scale fisheries (SSF) on seafloor integrity are more often assumed than quantitatively investigated. We carried out a literature review at global scale, resulting in 19 studies with quantitative data on sessile benthic bycatch an...

Elasmobranchs are among the marine species more threatened by overfishing. Their conservation is often impaired by the lack of knowledge of species’ life history traits. We filled knowledge gaps on age and growth of two threatened smooth-hound sharks (Mustelus mustelus, Mm; Mustelus punctulatus, Mp) in the central Mediterranean Sea, combining standard vertebrae analysis with growth increment data from a tagging survey. Our dat...

Disentangling the effects of mixed fisheries and climate change across entire food-webs requires a description of ecosystems using tools that can quantify interactive effects as well as bio-economic aspects. A calibrated dynamic model for the Sicily Channel food web, made up of 72 functional groups and including 13 fleet segments, was developed. A temporal simulation until 2050 was conducted to evaluate the bio-economic intera...

This study evaluates the relationship between both commercial and scientific spatial fisheries data and a new satellite‐based estimate of potential fish production (Ocean Productivity available to Fish, OPFish) in the European Seas. To construct OPFish, we used productivity frontal features derived from chlorophyll‐ a horizontal gradients, which characterize 10%–20% of the global phytoplankton production that effectively fuels...

The Mediterranean Sea has a long-lasting history of fishery exploitation that, together with other anthropogenic impacts, has led to declines in several marine organisms. In particular, elasmobranch populations have been severely impacted, with drastic decreases in abundance and species diversity. Based on their experience, fishers can provide information on marine species occurrence, abundance and behavioural traits on a long...

The recent establishment of the “landing obligation” under the reformed EU Common Fishery Policy has the twofold objective of reducing the excessive practice of discarding unwanted catch at sea and encouraging more selective and sustainable fisheries. Within this context, the awareness of the spatial distribution of potential unwanted catches is important for devising management measures aimed to decrease discards. This study...

The study reports information about the recapture of two tagged adult females of tope shark, Galeorhinus galeus (Linnaeus 1758), in the central Mediterranean Sea (south coasts of Sicily) in 2014 and 2017. The two females were tagged in North-East Atlantic, respectively in Scotland in 2009 and Ireland in 2015. The Scottish specimen was a 175 cm female increasing of about 10 kg in body weight and 37 cm in total length during its...

The feeding behaviour of two potentially competing species, the longspine snipefish, Macroramphosus scolopax , and the boarfish Capros aper was examined. While both species are very abundant along the Mediterranean coast and are regularly caught by demersal trawlers, they are of no commercial value. The diets of boarfish and longspine snipefish were investigated from samples collected between January 2001 and May 2002. Variati...