Acronym ECOLOGY AND MONITORING
Category
Aquaculture
Title Ecology and Monitoring benthic animal communities Croatian Adriatic Programme National Programme
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National Coordinator Stewart Schultz Coordinator email sschultz@unizd.hr
Coordinator institution
UNIZD - University of Zadar (Croatia)
Institutions involved
NA
Start year 2008 End year 2013 Funding (€) € 20,000 Website NA Summary Valuable marine benthic communities of algae and seagrasses are disappearing all over the world, and are in danger because of the Croatian Adriatic tourism development, aquaculture and fishing. Currently one of the most important needs for the preservation of these communities is the precise, rapid and inexpensive method for monitoring the areas that they cover. The project examines the following main hypotheses: seagrass species that live with them or their dependents, including market-valuable fish and shellfish, are slowly disappearing in several locations in the Croatian Adriatic, reducing eelgrass is not everywhere the same, but it depends on the proximity of anthropogenic sources pollution and locations of recent changes in the appearance of the coastline; decrease can be accurately quantified using appropriate sampling clusters; eelgrass communities are dynamic, but within marine protected areas and the relatively remote regions in Croatia they are not reduced within five years; affordable, single sampling may give a description of eelgrass cover, which would allow convenient determination of the degree of threat and future developments. Expected results include: digital image database of Croatian benthic resources, in which each image was precisely positioned globally, accurate, inexpensive and fast methodology for regular monitoring of valuable benthic resources, documenting the increase and decrease of the benthic communities in the Adriatic, such as Posidonia meadows or spread Caulerpa species, documenting the impact of human activities on these communities, such as marinas, aquaculture and tourism development, and a description of underwater archaeological sites. The methods used include underwater videography shooting from a boat with a very precise global positioning (<1m), diving transect survey method, followed by shooting and accurate GPS, a random sampling of surface coverage, and design experiments to test BACI anthropogenic effects on the benthic community. The results are checked by statistical replication within the BACI analysis. This project will create tested, rigorous and scientific basis for implementing the goals of the planning and the preservation of Croatian coastal and shallow marine protected areas and species, and will further clarify the basic biological relationships among diverse and productive marine life communities in the Adriatic Sea.
Development of methods for census and monitoring of benthic communities, identification of anthropogenic impacts on benthic communities, quantification of conservation status of benthic communities in the Croatian Adriatic.
Keywords
Cage aquaculture;
Monitoring;
Environmental impact;
Benthic communities;
Seagrass;
Impacts;
Anthropic activity;
Pollution;
Open sea aquaculture;
Fish habitat;
Marine Region
74
Northern Adriatic (GSA 17)
1
Marine Region Map
