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11 pages, 7 figures, supplementary data https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144002 ; Sustainable fishing practices must ensure human wellbeing by safeguarding the integrity of marine life-supporting systems. Unfortunately, a significant challenge to fisheries management is that sustainable fishing levels can decline, often synergistically, by co-occurring with climate-driven environmental stressors. Within one of the most impacted marine areas in the world, and encompassing a number of highly targeted commercial species, the small pelagic fish community of the western Mediterranean Sea has recently shown signs of collapse. In this study, we identify a worrying coincidence where fishing hotspots for the commercially valuable European sardine Sardina pilchardus and anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus occur in marine areas mostly affected by climate change. To identify these areas, we overlayed detailed, spatially explicit measurements of fishing pressure with the finest-scale maps of cumulative climate change impacts onto these species. According to our results, doubly impacted marine areas largely occur in the north-western Mediterranean Sea, with climate and fisheries mostly affecting European sardine. Reducing local stressors (i.e., fishing pressure) in highly impacted areas may contribute to maintain these communities within a "safe operating space" (SOS), where they remain resilient to climate change. Accordingly, the redistribution and/or reduction of fishing intensity may alleviate pressure in those areas already affected by climate change. Sustainable fishing strategies may benefit, therefore, from the SOS concept and the spatial assessments provided in this study ; This study was carried out within the Spanish Research project PELWEB (CTM2017-88939-R) funded by Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, the Catalonian Government PELCAT projects (CAT 152CAT00013, TAIS ARP059/19/00005), and the study received funding from European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 817578 (TRIATLAS project) ; Peer reviewed

10 pages, 4 figures, 6 tables, supplementary data https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2021.107699 ; Sardine and anchovy have shown important changes in landings, biomass, abundance and body condition with time in the Western Mediterranean Sea. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain these changes, including the negative interaction with jellyfish blooms. Increases in jellyfish blooms may be one of the reasons for a decline in these fish stocks because several jellyfish species have been shown to feed on fish larvae and juveniles. The main aim of the present study was to test the plausible relationship between jellyfish blooms and stock dynamics (abundance, biomass, and fitness) of anchovy and sardine, and its fisheries within an ecological context of the western Mediterranean Sea. Our main hypothesis was that jellyfish blooms, in combination with other environmental drivers, could have negative effects due to their predation on early stages of small pelagic fish (direct mortality) or due to predation on zooplankton, which is also prey of the small pelagic fish at different ontogenetic stages (direct competition). To test our hypothesis, we developed Bayesian Generalized Linear Mixed Models to compare landings, biomass, abundance, and Kn condition factor of both species with several climatic indices, oceanographic variables, and the occurrences of jellyfish blooms. Our results revealed that the jellyfish bloom occurrence had a high probability of negatively and broadly affecting both species in addition to changes in environmental conditions. This suggests that jellyfish blooms should be added to the likely causes of change when analyzing small pelagic fish change ; This study was carried out within the Spanish Research project PELWEB (CTM2017-88939-R) funded by Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and the Catalonian Government PELCAT projects (CAT 152CAT00013, TAIS ARP059/19/00005). [.] MC acknowledges the 'Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence' accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S) to the Institute of Marine Science (ICM-CSIC). ; Peer reviewed

Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is a relatively new approach to ocean management and has been widely implemented worldwide. Ideally, MSP should be established as a public process that analyzes and distributes human activities across space and time to achieve ecological, economic and social goals, which historically have been accomplished exclusively in the political arena. However, in most cases MSP seems to be driven primarily by economic interests rather than by sociocultural goals. In this paper, we discuss how integrating the missing sociocultural layers into MSP can help to reduce governance rigidity, promote adaptability in decision-making, support environmental justice, and improve MSP acceptance and uptake. In particular, we focus on identifying possible points of connection between MSP and frameworks based on social-ecological system theory, including co-management and other democratic and empowering alternatives. We conclude by proposing a new definition of the MSP process that is more inclusive, and mindful of users' rights and sociocultural objectives. If we bridge the gap between the dominant economic rhetoric and a de facto sociocultural-ecological system approach, we are likely to improve the chances of the MSP process succeeding on both the human and nature fronts. ecosystem based management, human dimension, Marine Spatial Planning, stakeholder participation, sociocultural values, inclusive process ; publishedVersion

10 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, supplementary data https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2020.111399 ; We quantified the incidence of microplastics in the gut contents of the European sardine (Sardina pilchardus) and anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) in the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea and tested which variables influence this abundance, including the prevalence of parasites (i.e., trematoda larvae and nematodes). We detected a 58% occurrence of microplastics ingestion in sardines and a 60% in anchovies. With respect to sardines, the individuals with lower body conditions were found to have the highest microplastics ingestion probabilities, whereas in anchovies such probabilities were observed in individuals with higher gonadosomatic indices and smaller size. The areas with the highest microplastics ingestion probabilities were the Gulf of Alicante for sardines and the Gulf of Lion - Ebro Delta for anchovies. Both species showed a positive relationship between parasites and microplastics ingestion. These results highlight that both parasitism and ingestion of microplastics are concerns for the health of marine stocks and human consumers ; This study was carried out within PELWEB (CTM2017-88939-R) and PELCAT (CAT 152CAT00013, TAIS ARP059/19/00005) projects. [.] MEDITS data collection has been co-funded by the EU through the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) within the National Program of collection, management and use of data in the fisheries sector and support for scientific advice regarding the Common Fisheries Policy ; Peer reviewed

20 pages, 15 figures, supplementary material https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.00622/full#supplementary-material ; In the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea, the European sardine (Sardina pilchardus) and the European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) are the most important small pelagic fish in terms of biomass and commercial interest. During the last years, these species have experimented changes in their abundance and biomass trends in the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea, in addition to changes in growth, reproduction and body condition. These species are particularly sensitive to environmental fluctuations with possible cascading effects as they play a key role in connecting the lower and upper trophic levels of marine food webs. It is therefore essential to understand the factors that most profoundly affect sardine and anchovy dynamics. This study used a two-step approach to understand how the environment influences the adult stages of these species in the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea. First, we explored the effects of environmental change over time using Random Forests and available datasets of species occurrence, abundance, biomass and landings. We then applied species distribution models to test the impact of the extreme pessimistic and optimistic Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) pathway scenarios, and to identify possible climate refuges: areas where these species may be able to persist under future environmental change. Findings from the temporal modeling showed mixed effects between environmental variables and for anchovy and sardine datasets. Future pathway projections highlight that both anchovy and sardine will undergo a reduction in their spatial distributions due to future climate conditions. The future climate refuges are the waters around the Rhone River (France) and the Ebro River (Spain) for both species. This study also highlights important knowledge gaps in our understanding of the dynamics of small pelagic fish in the region, which is needed to progress towards an ecosystem approach to fisheries management ; This study was carried out within the Spanish Research project PELWEB (CTM2017-88939-R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, the European Research Contract SPELMED (EASME/EMFF/2016/032) funded by the ECEASME and the Catalonian Government PELCAT projects (CAT 152CAT00013 and TAIS ARP059/19/00005) ; Peer reviewed

14 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables, supplementary data https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2022.108674 ; The Mediterranean Sea is a large marine ecosystem with high heterogeneity in both environmental and ecological characteristics. It presents clear gradients from north to south and west to east. It is also an important area in terms of biodiversity and conservation of vulnerable species, and it suffers from several cumulative human impacts, such as fishing and climate change. Previous studies have characterized spatial and temporal patterns of species distributions and biodiversity indicators. However, a comprehensive analysis combining a wide representation of biodiversity indicators is still missing. In this study, we examined spatial and temporal changes of marine communities along a latitudinal gradient over the continental shelf ecosystems (25–500 m depth) of the Western Mediterranean Sea, from the Gulf of Lion in the north to the Gibraltar Strait in the south. We used information from the MEDITS trawl scientific surveys from 1994 to 2018, and we calculated relevant indicators to investigate spatial and temporal patterns in the region. We selected several indicators measuring alpha (species richness, Shannon diversity index and Pielou evenness index) and beta (decomposing both turnover and nestedness) diversity, as well as previously studied indicators identified to be sensitive to fishing and climate change impacts (biomass-based and trophic-level based metrics). We assessed differences in these indicators for the surveyed community as a whole and for fish, crustaceans and cephalopods, separately, over five regions. Our results show clear latitudinal gradients in some indicators: we observe a reversed pattern between richness (decreasing from south to north) and biomass trends (increasing from south to north) for the demersal community. We also found a generalized increase in β-diversity in most regions with time, and a decline in the trophic level of the surveyed community. In addition, we identify a remarkable increase in several indicators when only considering the cephalopods group, and a general low environmental status for the North Catalan Sea. We discuss our results considering the differences between regions and taxa related to the fishing activity and environmental dynamics that can act at different scales. This in-depth analysis illustrates how to use a selection of indicators that combine the capacity to detect ecological changes from regional to sub-regional scales ; The authors thank all the participants in the MEDITS surveys. All MEDITS surveys are funded by the European Commission (EU) through the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) within the National Program of Data Collection Framework (DCF), management and use of data in the fisheries sector and support for scientific advice regarding the Common Fisheries Policy. Funding: This study was partially funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No a (FutureMARES). C. Veloy's contribution was supported by a PhD fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education (FPU18/05594) and the University of Barcelona. This work acknowledges the 'Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence' accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S). MH and MC also acknowledge support from the COCOCHA project (PID2019-110282RA-I00, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) ; Peer reviewed