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Introduction and Objective The H2020 NAUTILOS project aims to fill existing gaps in marine observation and modelling through the development of innovative and cost-effective technologies and observational methodologies for use in a wide range of crucial environmental contexts and sectors that can further support EU policies. The H2020 NAUTILOS project fills marine observation and modelling gaps by developing and deploying new technologies, promoting innovative and cost-effective methods in a wide range of crucial environmental settings and EU policy-related applications. Material and Methods NAUTILOS is developing innovative and cost-effective sensors and samplers for physical, chemical, and biological essential ocean variables in addition to micro-/nano-plastics. Newly developed technologies are integrated into diverse observing platforms, i.e. ships of opportunity, research vessels, surface and autonomous underwater vehicles, landers, fixed observatories, Argo floats, and Animal-borne instrumentation modules, to be deployed in key environmental settings. Results and Data relevance NAUTILOS will contribute to improving future ocean observation and forecasting capabilities through its holistic approach, which includes new sensors, new data to feed metocean forecast models, and the assessment of the forecasting capabilities, i.e. (OSSE) NAUTILOS data products FAIRness includes adopting standard vocabularies and open data publishing systems interoperable with European and international Ocean Data integrators. Moreover, synergies with relevant initiatives, Citizen Science campaigns and capacity building courses are also planned to reach out to all relevant stakeholders and users and promote free access and exchange of scientific data and knowledge. Conclusion The project will improve our understanding of environmental fluctuations and anthropogenic impacts in the oceans, relevant to aquaculture, fisheries and marine litter. Moreover, it will also complement and contribute to expanding European observation tools and services to obtain data collection at a much higher spatial resolution, temporal regularity and length than currently available at the European scale, and further democratise the marine environment's monitoring.

The Red Sea, home to the second-longest coral reef system in the world, is a vital resource for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Red Sea provides 90% of the Kingdom’s potable water by desalinization, supporting tourism, shipping, aquaculture, and fishing industries, which together contribute about 10%–20% of the country’s GDP. All these activities, and those elsewhere in the Red Sea region, critically depend on oceanic and atmospheric conditions. At a time of mega-development projects along the Red Sea coast, and global warming, authorities are working on optimizing the harnessing of environmental resources, including renewable energy and rainwater harvesting. All these require high-resolution weather and climate information. Toward this end, we have undertaken a multipronged research and development activity in which we are developing an integrated data-driven regional coupled modeling system. The telescopically nested components include 5-km- to 600-m-resolution atmospheric models to address weather and climate challenges, 4-km- to 50-m-resolution ocean models with regional and coastal configurations to simulate and predict the general and mesoscale circulation, 4-km- to 100-m-resolution ecosystem models to simulate the biogeochemistry, and 1-km- to 50-m-resolution wave models. In addition, a complementary probabilistic transport modeling system predicts dispersion of contaminant plumes, oil spill, and marine ecosystem connectivity. Advanced ensemble data assimilation capabilities have also been implemented for accurate forecasting. Resulting achievements include significant advancement in our understanding of the regional circulation and its connection to the global climate, development, and validation of long-term Red Sea regional atmospheric–oceanic–wave reanalyses and forecasting capacities. These products are being extensively used by academia, government, and industry in various weather and marine studies and operations, environmental policies, renewable energy applications, impact assessment, flood forecasting, and more. © 2021 American Meteorological Society

Existing European observation tools and services have the potential to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies to obtain a wide range of data at a much higher spatial resolution and temporal regularity and duration. The EU-funded NAUTILOS project will develop a new generation of sensors and samplers for physical, chemical, and biological essential ocean variables in addition to micro- and nano-plastics. The project will improve our understanding of environmental variations and anthropogenic impacts connected with aquaculture, fisheries, and marine litter. The project will integrate recently advanced marine technologies into different observing platforms and deploy them through innovative and cost-effective methods in a wide range of key environmental settings and EU policy-related applications. The project aims to complement and expand existing European observation instruments and services and further enable and democratise the monitoring of the marine environment for both traditional and non-traditional data users.

The two-year preparation for the National university entrance exams in Greece is one of the most trying periods in a young person's life, physically and emotionally. The present study reports the results from 442 last year senior high school students who completed an online survey (16-30 April 2020) concerning the lockdown impact on their mental health. Overall, the rate of positive screen for depression (PHQ-9 score ≥ 11) significantly increased from 48.5% to 63.8% and of those scoring within severe depression range (PHQ-9 ≥20) from 10% to 27%; for anxiety (GAD-7 score ≥ 11) increased from 23.8% to 49.5% and of those scoring within severe anxiety range (GAD-7≥17) from 3.8% to 20.5%. After taking sex and baseline (one month prior to the lockdown) levels of depression and anxiety into account, the level of lockdown experienced distress was predictive of depression and anxiety levels in time of home confinement, accounting for about 30% of variance in symptoms severity scores. Although our results may be subject to sampling and recall bias, the unexpectedly high rates of anxiety and depression warrant an urgent call to action aiming at mitigating and managing mental health risks of senior high school students in future waves of pandemic. © 2020

Ecosystem models are recognized as valuable tools to understand marine ecosystem dynamics and address management questions, requiring an integrated approach of physical and biotic processes. In the present study, a three-dimensional basin scale Mediterranean hydrodynamic/biogeochemical model, currently operational as part of the POSEIDON forecasting system, was extensively validated against available in-situ and satellite data. The generic POSEIDON ecosystem model skill was objectively assessed, in capturing the observed seasonal variability of the main chemical ecosystem components within the planktonic food web. A cluster K-means analysis was applied to obtain an objective `biogeography' of the Mediterranean Sea, allowing a more efficient validation of model outputs against observational data. The model presented a reasonable skill in reproducing the seasonal cycle and observed patterns of the Mediterranean inorganic nutrients and chlorophyll-a, characterized by a prominent west-to-east gradient and their increase in areas receiving lateral nutrient inputs. Despite some model deviations, validation results have demonstrated the capability of the model to represent the Mediterranean ecosystem, ranging from oligotrophic open ocean to mesotrophic conditions in productive coastal areas.

A three-dimensional coupled hydrodynamic/biogeochemical numerical model, currently in operation as part of the POSEIDON forecasting system, was implemented in the Mediterranean Sea. The model was assessed regarding its efficacy in representing the main biogeochemical components and seasonal dynamics of the Mediterranean planktonic system. Model outputs were compared with available historical data in a proposed objective eco-regionalisation of the Mediterranean basin, based on productivity. The simulated production (primary, bacterial) and planktonic biomass (phytoplankton, zooplankton and bacteria), as well as particulate and dissolved organic carbon, were found consistent with observational estimates in different areas of the Mediterranean Sea, following large scale productivity gradients. Although some limitations of the model were identified, the observed variability of the phytoplanktonic community structure was reasonably well-reproduced, simulating a dominant microbial food web with an intermittent development of the classical food web. The generic POSEIDON ecosystem model skill assessment provides a benchmark for future model improvement, highlighting the need to expand the range of biological variables sampled for further model calibration and validation. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Malanotte-Rizzoli, Paola ... et. al.-- 76 pages, The importance of the Mediterranean Sea for the world ocean has long been recognized. First, the Mediterranean sea has a profound impact on the Atlantic ocean circulation and, consequently, on the global thermohaline conveyor belt. Maps of the 5 Mediterranean salty water tongue exiting from the Gibraltar strait at intermediate depths and spreading throughout the Atlantic interior are well known since the 1950s. Through direct pathways to the Atlantic polar regions or through indirect mixing processes, the salty Mediterranean water preconditions the deep convection cells of the polar Atlantic. There the North Atlantic Deep Water is formed which successively spreads throughout 10 the world ocean constituting the core of the global thermohaline circulation. Even more importantly, the Mediterranean Sea is a laboratory basin for the investigation of processes of global importance, being much more amenable to observational surveys because of its location in mid-latitude and its dimensions. Both the western and eastern basins in fact possess closed thermohaline circulations analogous to the 15 global conveyor belt. A unique upper layer open thermohaline cell connects the eastern to the western basin and, successively, to the north Atlantic through the Gibraltar strait. In it, the Atlantic water entering into Gibraltar in the surface layer, after travelling to the easternmost Levantine basin, is transformed into one of the saltiest water masses through air–sea heat and moisture fluxes. This is the salty water which, crossing the 20 entire basin in the opposite direction below the surface Atlantic water, finally exits from the Gibraltar strait at mid-depths. Both the western and eastern basins are endowed with deep/intermediate convection cells analogous to the polar Atlantic deep convection cells or to the intermediate mode water ones. Deep and intermediate water masses are therefore formed in differ25 ent sites of the entire basin. Because of their easily accessible locations, these convection cells are much more amenable to direct observational surveys and mooring arrays

A 1-D full-life-cycle, Individual-based model (IBM), two-way coupled with a hydrodynamic/ biogeochemical model, is demonstrated for anchovy and sardine in the N. Aegean Sea (Eastern Mediterranean). The model is stage-specific and includes a ‘Wisconsin’ type bioenergetics, a diel vertical migration and a population dynamics module, with the incorporation of known differences in biological attributes between the anchovy and sardine stocks. A new energy allocation/egg production algorithm was developed, allowing for breeding pattern to move along the capital-income breeding continuum. Fish growth was calibrated against available size-at-age data by tuning food consumption (the half saturation coefficients) using a genetic algorithm. After a ten-years spin up, the model reproduced well the magnitude of population biomasses and spawning periods of the two species in the N. Aegean Sea. Surprisingly, model simulations revealed that anchovy depends primarily on stored energy for egg production (mostly capital breeder) whereas sardine depends heavily on direct food intake (income breeder). This is related to the peculiar phenology of plankton production in the area, with mesozooplankton concentration exhibiting a sharp decrease from early summer to autumn and a subsequent increase from winter to early summer. Monthly changes in somatic condition of fish collected on board the commercial purse seine fleet followed closely the simulated mesozooplankton concentration. Finally, model simulations showed that, when both the anchovy and sardine stocks are overexploited, the mesozooplankton concentration increases, which may open up ecological space for competing species. The importance of protecting the recruit spawners was highlighted with model simulations testing the effect of changing the timing of the existing 2.5-months closed period. Optimum timing for fishery closure is different for anchovy and sardine because of their opposite spawning and recruitment periods. © 2019 Gkanasos et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

A dynamic energy budget (DEB) model was developed to investigate the growth and reproduction of cultured bivalve species raised under different environmental conditions (varying phytoplankton carbon biomass [Phyto-C], particulate organic carbon [POC] and temperature) and tuned against field data for Mytilus galloprovincialis from the Maliakos and Thermaikos Gulfs (Aegean Sea, Greece). Values of most DEB model parameters were adopted from the literature, while half saturation constant (Xk) and initial values of energy reserves (E) and reproductive buffer (R) were calibrated. Different values have been found for Xk in the 2 areas (Maliakos: Xk = 36 mg C m-3; Thermaikos: Xk = 28 mg C m-3), suggesting that Xk should be treated as a site-specific parameter. Food density (X) was adapted to include not only Phyto-C but also POC in the diet of M. galloprovincialis and only when Phyto-C density was low compared to POC density. Results showed a small contribution of POC during spring in the Maliakos Gulf and almost none at Thermaikos Gulf. The simulated mussel growth showed good agreement with field data. Sensitivity tests on the calibrated parameters (E, R and Xk) were performed to investigate model uncertainty. The standard deviation of simulations with perturbed parameter/initial values remained relatively small and appeared to increase as the modeled mussel grew, in agreement with observations. © The authors 2017.