Ecosystem benefits of adopting a whole-site approach to MPA management

Globally, nations are designating marine protected areas to recover and protect habitats and species. With targets to protect 30% of marine areas by 2030, the effectiveness of MPAs to protect designated space is important. In Lyme Bay (south-west UK), two co-located MPAs have each adopted different management styles to exclude mobile demersal fishing: a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) protecting the known extent of sensitive reef habitat and an area including a mosaic of reef and sedimentary habitats where the whole site is protected from mobile demersal fishing under a statutory instrument (SI). Underwater videography, both towed (individuals m−2) and baited (MaxN), was used to enumerate change over time of reef species (number of taxa, total abundance, functional richness and functional redundancy) in the MPAs and nearby control areas (2008–2019). Total abundance and functional redundancy of sessile taxa and functional richness of mobile taxa increased, while the number of sessile or mobile taxa, functional richness of sessile taxa, total abundance of mobile taxa or functional redundancy of mobile taxa did not differ from nearby control sites. Over time, both management styles did result in increases in sessile and sedentary taxa diversity relative to open controls, with increases in total abundance of 15% and 95% in the “feature-based” and whole-site MPAs, respectively, alongside increases in the number of sessile taxa of 44% over time in the “feature-based” MPA. However, the mobile taxa in the whole-site MPA showed levels of functional redundancy 7% higher than the “feature-based” MPA, indicative of a higher community resilience inside the whole-site MPA to perturbations, such as storms or biological invasions. Increases seen in the diversity of sessile taxa were expected only in areas where mobile demersal fishing was excluded (~46.8% of its areas). Therefore, if the whole “feature-based” MPA was consistently protected, we expected to see similar levels of increase in the functional extent of reef. While the “feature-based” MPA showed similar results over time to that of the “whole site,” the “whole site” showed higher levels of diversity, both taxonomical and functional

A Time-Domain Analysis of Intracardiac Electrograms for Arrhythmia Detection

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73045/1/j.1540-8159.1991.tb05116.x.pd

Rewilding the Sea? A Rapid, Low Cost Model for Valuing the Ecosystem Service Benefits of Kelp Forest Recovery Based on Existing Valuations and Benefit Transfers

Kelp forests and seagrasses are important carbon sinks that are declining globally. Rewilding the sea, through restoring these crucial habitats, their related biodiversity and ecosystem contributions, is a movement and concept, gathering pace in the United Kingdom and globally. Yet understanding of the economic costs and benefits for setting areas of the sea aside—and removing some human impacts from them—is not well understood. The potential benefits and distributional impacts on marine users and wider society is critical to make evidence based decisions. Ensuring that areas of the sea recover, and that the impacts (both positive and negative) are understood, requires targeted research to help guide decisions to optimize the opportunity of recovery, while minimizing any negative impacts on sea users and coastal communities. We approach the problem from an ecosystem services perspective, looking at the opportunity of restoring a kelp bed in Sussex by removing fishing activity from areas historically covered in kelp. Development of an ecosystem services valuation model showed restoring kelp to its highest mapped past extent (96% greater, recorded in 1987) would deliver a range of benefits valued at over £ 3.5 million GBP. The application of an ecosystem services approach enabled the full range of benefits from habitat restoration to be assessed. The results and the gaps identified in site specific data and values for this area, have broader implications in fisheries management and natural resource management tools for restoring marine habitats and ecosystems in the United Kingdom.</jats:p

Acoustic Complexity Index to assess benthic biodiversity of a partially protected area in the southwest of the UK

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordThe soundscape of the marine environment is a relatively understudied area of ecology that has the potential to provide large amounts of information on biodiversity, reproductive behaviour, habitat selection, spawning and predator–prey interactions. Biodiversity is often visually assessed and used as a proxy for ecosystem health. Visual assessment using divers or remote video methods can be expensive, and limited to times of good weather and water visibility. Previous studies have concluded that acoustic measures, such as the Acoustic Complexity Index (ACI), correlate with visual biodiversity estimates and offer an alternative to assess ecosystem health. Here, the ACI measured over 5 years in a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the UK, Lyme Bay, was analysed alongside another monitoring method, Baited Remote Underwater Video Systems (BRUVs). Two treatments were sampled annually in the summer from 2014 until 2018 with sites inside the MPA, as well as Open Control sites outside of the MPA. Year by year correlations, which have been used elsewhere to test ACI, showed significant correlations with Number of Species and ACI. However, the sign of these correlations changed almost yearly, showing that more in-depth analyses are needed. Multivariate analysis of the benthic assemblage composition (from BRUVs) was carried out by Permutational Multivariate Analysis of Variance (PERMANOVA) using Distance Matrices. Although not consistently correlating with univariate measures, the ACI was significantly interacting with the changing benthic assemblage composition, as it changed over time and protection (Inside vs Outside the MPA). ACI showed potential to allude to shifting benthic communities, yet with no consistency when used alongside univariate measures of diversity. Although it is not without its own disadvantages, and thus should be developed further before implementation, the ACI could potentially reflect more complex changes to the benthos than simply the overall diversity.Natural EnglandEuropean Commissio

Rewilding of Protected Areas Enhances Resilience of Marine Ecosystems to Extreme Climatic Events

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are employed as tools to manage human impacts, especially fishing pressure. By excluding the most destructive activities MPAs can rewild degraded areas of seabed habitat. The potential for MPAs to increase ecosystem resilience from storms is, however, not understood, nor how such events impact seabed habitats. Extreme storm disturbance impact was studied in Lyme Bay MPA, Southwest United Kingdom, where the 2008 exclusion of bottom-towed fishing from the whole site allowed recovery of degraded temperate reef assemblages to a more complex community. Severe storm impacts in 2013–2014 resulted in major damage to the seabed so that assemblages in the MPA were more similar to sites where fishing continued than at any point since the designation of the MPA; the communities were not dominated by species resistant to physical disturbance. Nevertheless, annual surveys since 2014 have demonstrated that the initial recovery of MPA assemblages was much quicker than that seen following the cessation of chronic towed fishing impact in 2008. Likewise, General Additive Mixed Effect Models (GAMMs) showed that inside the MPA increases in diversity metrics post-Storm were greater and more consistent over time than post-Bottom-Towed Fishing. As extreme events are likely to become more common with climate change, wave exposure observations indicated that 29% of coastal reef MPAs around the United Kingdom may be exposed to comparable wave climate extremes, and may be similarly impacted. This paper therefore provides an insight into the likely extent and magnitude of ecological responses of seabed ecosystems to future extreme disturbance events.</jats:p

The Bin Area Method: A Computationally Efficient Technique for Analysis of Ventricular and Atrial Intracardiac Electrograms

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/74901/1/j.1540-8159.1990.tb02028.x.pd

Light-Driven H2 Evolution and C═C or C═O Bond Hydrogenation by Shewanella oneidensis : A Versatile Strategy for Photocatalysis by Nonphotosynthetic Microorganisms

Photocatalytic chemical synthesis by coupling abiotic photosensitizers to purified enzymes provides an effective way to overcome the low conversion efficiencies of natural photosynthesis while exploiting the high catalytic rates and selectivity of enzymes as renewable, earth-abundant electrocatalysts. However, the selective synthesis of multiple products requires more versatile approaches and should avoid the time-consuming and costly processes of enzyme purification. Here we demonstrate a cell-based strategy supporting light-driven H2 evolution or the hydrogenation of C═C and C═O bonds in a nonphotosynthetic microorganism. Methylviologen shuttles photoenergized electrons from water-soluble photosensitizers to enzymes that catalyze H2 evolution and the reduction of fumarate, pyruvate, and CO2 in Shewanella oneidensis. The predominant reaction is selected by the experimental conditions, and the results allow rational development of cell-based strategies to harness nature’s intrinsic catalytic diversity for selective light-driven synthesis of a wide range of products

The restoration potential of offshore mussel farming on degraded seabed habitat

The United Kingdom's first large-scale, offshore, long-line mussel farm deployed its first ropes in 2013 in Lyme Bay, southwest United Kingdom, located in an area of seabed that was heavily degraded due to historic bottom-towed fishing. It was hypothesised that due to the artificial structures that accumulate mussels and exclude destructive fishing practices, the seabed could be restored. To assess the restoration potential of the farm and its ecosystem interactions over time, a multi-method, annual monitoring approach was undertaken. Here, we tested the effects of the farm trial stations on the seabed habitat, epifauna and demersal species over 5 years. Responses of % mussel cover, sessile and sedentary, and mobile taxa were measured using three video methods. Within 2 years of infrastructure deployment, mussel clumps and shells were detected below the headlines, increasing the structural complexity of the seabed. After 4 years, there was a significantly greater abundance of mobile taxa compared to the Controls that remained open to trawling. Commercial European lobster and edible crab were almost exclusively recorded within the farm. We discuss whether these findings can be considered a restoration of the seabed and how these data can be used to inform the future management of offshore mariculture globally

A novel method for identifying coded tags recorded on aquatic acoustic monitoring systems.

Aquatic biotelemetry increasingly relies on using acoustic transmitters ('tags') that enable passive detection of tagged animals using fixed or mobile receivers. Both tracking methods are resource-limited, restricting the spatial area in which movements of highly mobile animals can be measured using proprietary detection systems. Transmissions from tags are recorded by underwater noise monitoring systems designed for other purposes, such as cetacean monitoring devices, which have been widely deployed in the marine environment; however, no tools currently exist to decode these detections, and thus valuable additional information on animal movements may be missed. Here, we describe simple hybrid methods, with potentially wide application, for obtaining information from otherwise unused data sources. The methods were developed using data from moored, acoustic cetacean detectors (C-PODs) and towed passive receiver arrays, often deployed to monitor the vocalisations of cetaceans, but any similarly formatted data source could be used. The method was applied to decode tag detections that were found to have come from two highly mobile fish species, bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and Twaite shad (Alosa fallax), that had been tagged in other studies. Decoding results were validated using test tags; range testing data were used to demonstrate the relative efficiency of these receiver methods in detecting tags. This approach broadens the range of equipment from which acoustic tag detections can be decoded. Novel detections derived from the method could add significant value to past and present tracking studies at little additional cost, by providing new insights into the movement of mobile animals at sea