A brief introduction to the TrawledSeas Project: Bottom Trawling as a Driver of Seascape Transformation

5th International Network for Submarine Canyon Investigation and Scientific Exchange International Symposium (INCISE), 14-18 June 2021Bottom trawling is one of the most widespread fishing practices in the world’s oceans. It involves towing of nets to harvest benthic and demersal living resources. The dragging of trawling gears along the seafloor results in scraping and ploughing the seabed, which leads to the formation of turbid plumes of resuspended sediments, changes in the sediment erosion/accumulation rates and modifications of their fluxes and budgets, which results in measurable alterations of the submarine geomorphology. As submarine canyons are increasingly targeted by trawlers, there is a growing need to quantify, monitor and mitigate the impacts of bottom trawling in these environments. The TrawledSeas Project aims to quantitatively characterise the contribution of bottom trawling on the geomorphic evolution of submarine canyons, over a range of spatial scales, from fine (m–dam) to mesoscale (5–100 km). To address this objective, a new automated marine landscape mapping technique is being developed to quantify the morphological signature of bottom trawling, based on the analysis of high-resolution multibeam data implemented in a Geographic Information System (GIS). The proposed methodology integrates standard general (e.g. curvature, rugosity, roughness or fractal dimension) and specific (e.g. object-based image methods) geomorphic techniques with new ones developed in this project in a multiscale approach. It combines GIS open source tools with bathymetric dataset at different resolutions, from hull-mounted multibeam data to compare the large-scale morphology of trawled and untrawled areas, to Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) bathymetric data to identify and quantify trawl marks at small spatial scale. Additionally, data from repeated surveys will be used to assess potential temporal changes in the seafloor morphology of new fishing grounds. The implementation of these geomorphological tools in different study sites incised by submarine canyons (e.g. Catalan, Malta-Sicilian, Norwegian, Canterbury, Patagonian and W Canadian continental margins), will allow to characterise the differential impact of bottom trawling on the canyons’ seafloor, in terms of extent, rates and volume change in different geologic and climatic settingsPeer reviewe

Rare SLC13A1 variants associate with intervertebral disc disorder highlighting role of sulfate in disc pathology.

To access publisher's full text version of this article, please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field or click on the hyperlink at the top of the page marked DownloadBack pain is a common and debilitating disorder with largely unknown underlying biology. Here we report a genome-wide association study of back pain using diagnoses assigned in clinical practice; dorsalgia (119,100 cases, 909,847 controls) and intervertebral disc disorder (IDD) (58,854 cases, 922,958 controls). We identify 41 variants at 33 loci. The most significant association (ORIDD = 0.92, P = 1.6 × 10-39; ORdorsalgia = 0.92, P = 7.2 × 10-15) is with a 3'UTR variant (rs1871452-T) in CHST3, encoding a sulfotransferase enzyme expressed in intervertebral discs. The largest effects on IDD are conferred by rare (MAF = 0.07 - 0.32%) loss-of-function (LoF) variants in SLC13A1, encoding a sodium-sulfate co-transporter (LoF burden OR = 1.44, P = 3.1 × 10-11); variants that also associate with reduced serum sulfate. Genes implicated by this study are involved in cartilage and bone biology, as well as neurological and inflammatory processes.European Commission European Commission Joint Research Centre Novo Nordisk Foundation Novocure Limite