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Few works have been carried out on benthic harmful algal blooms (BHAB) species in the southern Mediterranean and no data are available for the highly dynamic Strait of Gibraltar (western Mediterranean waters). For the first time, Ostreopsis sp. 9, Prorocentrum lima and Coolia monotis were isolated in this key region in terms of exchanges between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean and subject to intense maritime traffic. Ribotyping confirmed the morphological identification of these three dinoflagellates species. Monoclonal cultures were established and the maximum growth rate and cell yield were measured at a temperature of 24 °C and an irradiance of 90 µmol photons m−2 s−1, for each species: 0.26 ± 0.02 d−1 (8.75 × 103 cell mL−1 after 28 days) for Ostreopsis sp. 9, 0.21 ± 0.01 d−1 (49 × 103 cell mL−1 after 145 days) for P. lima and 0.21 ± 0.01 d−1 (10.02 × 103 cell mL−1 after 28 days) for C. monotis. Only P. lima was toxic with concentrations of okadaic acid and dinophysistoxin-1 measured in optimal growth conditions ranging from 6.4 pg cell−1 to 26.97 pg cell−1 and from 5.19 to 25.27 pg cell−1, respectively. The toxin content of this species varied in function of the growth phase. Temperature influenced the growth and toxin content of P. lima. Results suggest that future warming of Mediterranean coastal waters may lead to higher growth rates and to increases in cellular toxin levels in P. lima. Nitrate and ammonia affected the toxin content of P. lima but no clear trend was noted. In further studies, we have to isolate other BHAB species and strains from Strait of Gibraltar waters to obtain more insight into their diversity and toxicity.

A comparison of three analytical methods (the indirect GC‐FPD and MIMS, and direct LC‐MS/MS) for dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) measurements was conducted to assess their accuracy and reliability. The three methods showed a linear response but are distinguished by their linearity range, the largest being for MIMS. All three methods showed good precision on Alexandrium minutum samples (2–12%). The variability between the three methods when comparing analyses of A. minutum replicates was 11%, with the DMSP measurements by LC‐MS/MS being the highest. This result also confirms that indirect DMSP measurement after hydrolysis for GC or MIMS methods does not lead to an overestimation of DMSP values in A. minutum. A special focus was made on the more recent LC‐MS/MS method including further assays in sample preparation and storage from cultures of the dinoflagellate A. minutum. Dinoflagellate cells should be harvested by gentle filtration (< 5 cm Hg) or slow centrifugation (500 × g) to retrieve the largest DMSP pool. For the LC‐MS/MS method, MeOH used for cell extraction should be added prior to freezing (to prevent DMSP degradation). Samples will then be stable in frozen storage for at least 2 months. Finally, direct and indirect methods are complementary for identifying the exact DMSP fraction among dimethylsulfide‐producing compounds that compose total and particulate DMSP pools issued from newly screened organisms or environmental samples.

Inspired by agroecology, ecological aquaculture proposes an alternative model that uses ecology as a paradigm to develop innovative, more eco-friendly aquaculture with environmental, economic and social benefits. Integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) is one application of this principle. Inspired by the natural trophic chain, it associates primary producers with primary or secondary consumers, providing a new source of biomass without requiring supplementary feed by recycling inorganic and organic wastes. Of these systems, land-based IMTA demonstrate several advantages, especially easier control of nutrient flows, contaminants and/or predators. This study focused on a land-based marine IMTA, combining a recirculating aquaculture system for fish consecutively with a natural marine polyculture of microalgae and oyster cultivation. The objective was to assess the ability of the microalgal polyculture both to bioremediate fish nutrients and to sustain oyster growth. For the first time in a Mediterranean climate, we confirmed the feasibility of developing a microalgae community of interest for oysters maintained by fish effluent. Despite strong variability in microalgae production, this IMTA system resulted in significant oyster growth over the experimental period of 1 month, with growth results of the same order of magnitude as natural juvenile growth. In the conditions tested, this IMTA with reduced human intervention allowed a gain in recoverable biomass of 3.7 g of oyster produced per killogramme of fish feed distributed. By transforming waste into additional biomass, IMTA offer a more promising, ecological avenue for aquaculture, based on a circular economy, which may in turn increase the social acceptability of fish farming.

Light is a key environmental factor for the growth of micro-algae, and optimizing the capture of light is critical for high efficiency production systems. As the density of the population of micro-algae increases, the availability of light decreases, leading to a reduction in the growth rate because of mutual shading, while other effects, such as photo-inhibition, might be especially frequent when the population density is low. Several models in the literature have been developed to take into account light phenomena and predict micro-algal growth, particularly in a mono-culture. With the help of a simple expression for the attenuation of the light, we propose and justify a new growth function that incorporates both photo-inhibition and photo-limitation. In agreement with the experimental data, this new formulation describes the micro-algal response to a wide range of situations of excessive or insufficient light intensities through an explicit dependence on both the incident light and the biomass concentration. While simple, the proposed expression can be satisfactorily applied to practical cases under nutrient replete conditions in photo-bioreactors with different sizes and geometries. It extends naturally to the growth of different species, providing a dynamic model which can simulate experiments in a mono-culture as well as in poly-cultures. The investigation of the competition for light-limited growth shows that the model predicts competitive exclusion, which has also been experimentally demonstrated. This leads to new perspectives for the control and optimization of mixed micro-algal cultures.

Recently, CO2 recycling for the production of valuable microalgae has acquired substantial interest. Most studies investigating CO2 conversion efficiency in algal cultures were based on single species, although a stabilising effect of algal diversity on biomass production was recently highlighted. However, addition of CO2 into polyalgal cultures requires a careful control of pH; performance of CO2 conversion, growth and carbon biomass production are affected by pH differently, depending on the species of microalgae. This study investigates the efficiency of CO2 conversion by natural marine algal assemblage cultivated in open, land-based raceways (4.5 m3, 10 m2), working as high rate algal ponds (HRAP). Ponds were enriched with nitrogen and phosphate, pure CO2 was added and algal cultures were grown under three different fixed pH levels: pH 6, 7 and 8. The highest conversion of photosynthetically fixed CO2 into carbon biomass (40 %) was reached at pH 7, an intermediate level, due to the partial CO2 asphyxiation of algal predators (copepods, ciliates), while being under the suboptimal conditions for the development of marine amoebae. Under this pH, the theoretical maximal biological conversion of available CO2 into carbon biomass was estimated to be 60 % in naturally inoculated open ponds.

Several studies focused on wastewater treatment in High Rate Algal Ponds (HRAP) suggest that highly variable climatic conditions cause large variations of microalgal biomass productivity. In the present study, we show that similar carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus removal efficiencies were reached in different HRAPs treating urban wastewaters located in two different temperate (Mediterranean and oceanic) climates. Furthermore, similar ecological successions were observed in these HRAPs. During the start-up phase, the consumption of organic matter by detritivores, already present in the wastewater, appears to be necessary for the microalgae to grow within two weeks in spring. The growth of the rapid-growing species, Chlorella sp., followed by the grazing-resilient species, Scenedesmus sp., combined with nitrifying and denitrifying bacterial activity, removed most the ammonia. The resulting exhaustion of ammonia would limit the complete removal of dissolved COD by bacteria and phosphate by microalgae in the HRAPs. This study shows that similar biological and environmental constraints were applied on the HRAPs, making the process efficiency highly reproducible under different temperate latitudes.

Recent observations in polar marine waters have shown that a large fraction of primary production may be lost to respiration by planktonic bacteria due to very low bacterial growth efficiencies in cold waters. Here we report that sea temperature may be a key factor influencing the interaction between bacteria and primary production in North Atlantic and Arctic waters, suggesting that low primary production rates could not sustain bacterial carbon demand in the coldest Arctic waters. The use of freshly produced phytoplankton exudate by bacteria in early- and mid-summer was assessed, together with the bacterial uptake of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN = nitrate and ammonium), in surface waters along a latitudinal gradient from the North Sea to the Arctic sea ice. Bacterial production was independent of the low primary production measured in the coldest waters. Under these conditions, heterotrophic bacteria can consume a large fraction of DIN and N-rich organic matter, making them strong contributors to N fluxes in these waters.

The pelagic dynamics of the cosmopolitan scyphozoan Aurelia sp. was investigated in three French Mediterranean lagoons, Thau, Berre and Bages-Sigean, which harbour resident populations. The annual cycles showed a common univoltine pattern in all lagoons where the presence of pelagic stages in the water column lasted ∼8 months. Field observations showed a release of ephyrae in winter time followed by pronounced growth between April and July, when individuals reached the largest sizes, before disappearing from the water column. Maximum abundance of ephyrae and medusae were registered in Thau. Medusae abundance attained a maximum of 331 ind 100 m-3 in Thau, 18 ind 100 m-3 in Berre and 7 ind 100 m-3 in Bages-Sigean lagoons. Temperature and zooplankton abundance appeared as leading factors of growth, where Bages-Sigean showed the population with higher growth rates (2.66 mm day-1) and maximum size (32 cm), followed by Thau (0.57-2.56 mm day-1; 22.4 cm) and Berre (1.57-2.22 mm day-1; 17 cm). The quantification of environmental windows used by the species showed wider ranges than previously reported in the Mediterranean Sea, which suggests a wide ecological plasticity of Aurelia spp. populations in north-western Mediterranean lagoons.