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We have reached a critical juncture for addressing climate change and must find ways to urgently and dramatically reduce our carbon emissions. Extraction of energy from offshore renewable energy sources is seen as one of the key measures that will enable this reduction. The EU highlights offshore renewable energy as a key enabler for achieving its carbon neutrality ambitions by 2050, as outlined in the EU Green Deal. However, to achieve the EU Green Deal vision, offshore renewable energy capacity in European must increase 30-fold compared to current installed capacity. Several offshore renewable energy extraction technologies are already reaching high levels of maturity, and this need for significant expansion of offshore renewable energy is also driving innovation in less established technologies. However, in the rush to develop and install new offshore renewable energy devices across the European sea basins, we cannot ignore the potential environmental and societal impacts that they could have. We must take steps to ensure that the expansion of this sector is managed sustainably, responsibly and equitably. Building on the recommendations made in EMB Vision Document No. 2 on Marine Renewable Energy from 2010, and at a critical juncture for the industry, Future Science Brief No. 9 provides an overview of the current offshore renewable energy technology, and the extent of European deployment to date. It discusses the environmental and socioeconomic considerations that must be considered throughout the lifetime of an offshore renewable energy system. The publication presents the key knowledge, research, and capacity gaps that must be addressed to ensure sustainable delivery of the EU Green Deal objectives. It closes with key policy, research, capacity, and data recommendations to take the sector forward.

Global change is striking harder and faster in the Mediterranean Sea than elsewhere, where high levels of human pressure and proneness to climate change interact in modifying the structure and disrupting regulative mechanisms of marine ecosystems. Rocky reefs are particularly exposed to such environmental changes with ongoing trends of degradation being impressive. Due to the variety of habitat types and associated marine biodiversity, rocky reefs are critical for the functioning of marine ecosystems, and their decline could profoundly affect the provision of essential goods and services which human populations in coastal areas rely upon. Here, we provide an up-to-date overview of the status of rocky reefs, trends in human-driven changes undermining their integrity, and current and upcoming management and conservation strategies, attempting a projection on what could be the future of this essential component of Mediterranean marine ecosystems.

Marine space is three dimensional, the turnover of life forms is rapid, defining a fourth dimension: time. The definition of ecologically significant spatial units calls for the spatio-temporal framing of significant ecological connections in terms of extra-specific (biogeochemical cycles), intra-specific (life cycles), and inter-specific (food webs) fluxes. The oceanic volume can be split in sub-systems that can be further divided into smaller sub-units where ecosystem processes are highly integrated. The volumes where oceanographic and ecological processes take place are splittable into hot spots of ecosystem functioning, e.g., upwelling currents triggering plankton blooms, whose products are then distributed by horizontal currents, so defining Cells of Ecosystem Functioning (CEFs), whose identification requires the collaboration of physical and chemical oceanography, biogeochemistry, marine geology, plankton, nekton and benthos ecology and biology, food web dynamics, marine biogeography. CEFs are fuzzy objects that reflect the instability of marine systems.

This publication is primarily aimed at stakeholders involved in ocean observing, spanning diverse roles from commissioning, managing, funding and coordinating, to developing, implementing, or advising on, ocean observation programmes. Such programmes will have strategic and policy drivers but their main purpose may vary from predominantly researchdriven scientific purposes to environmental monitoring for providing data and reporting to legally-binding regulations or directives. The main focus is on European capabilities but set in a global context with the various actors spanning a variety of geographical scales from national to regional and European. Key stakeholder organizations include environmental or other agencies; marine research institutions, their researchers and operators; international and regional ocean observing initiatives and programmes; national, regional and European policy makers and their advisors; national stations for observations; etc.). It will also be of interest to the wider marine and maritime research and policy community. The main aim of the publication is to increase the relevance of current (and future) European biological ocean observation capacity to strengthen global efforts towards our understanding of the ocean and enhance marine biodiversity conservation, for maintaining a healthy ocean for healthy societies. This document explains why biological ocean observations are needed to assess progress against national and international conservation targets, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Blue Growth agenda and to contribute to key EU directives including the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). To achieve this, the publication highlights the need of biological ocean observations to reflect clearly defined hypotheses about potential causes of change, including the combined impacts of local and global drivers, and to support the management of our impacts on the ocean. Additionally, it calls for flexible biological ocean observing programmes to capture the relevant drivers operating at multiple spatial scales, by networking and integration of ongoing monitoring programmes, methodological standardization and appropriate policies of data integration and dissemination. It then presents key variables, elements and information products to inform on the status and trends of marine biodiversity.

La biologia studia una singolarità nell’organizzazione della materia (la materia vivente) e si basa su conoscenze che sono di pertinenza di altre scienze che studiano le proprietà generali della materia, soprattutto non vivente. La mancanza di “leggi” predittive e universali in biologia è spesso presa come un segno di arretratezza della disciplina, in attesa di una sua maturazione. Tali “leggi”, però, non esistono ma i biologi hanno elaborato, e tuttora sviluppano, una teoria che spiega un fatto incontrovertibile: la materia vivente evolve. La teoria darwiniana, riformata più volte, rimane l’approccio unanimemente ritenuto corretto da chi si occupa professionalmente di scienze della vita. La negazione del valore esplicativo della teoria dell’evoluzione non è basata su spiegazioni alternative che non chiamino in causa entità soprannaturali.

Oceans and seas are essential components of the biosphere. Marine sustainability and human society are intrinsically interlinked. The oceans are crucial for global food security, human health and regulation of climate. The livelihoods of over 3 billion people worldwide depend upon services from marine and coastal biodiversity. Under the EU’s blue growth strategy, new marine goods and services, such as marine renewable energy, marine biotechnology and marine minerals, are seen as important sources of employment, economic security and sustainable development. Over the past 10 years there has been increasing focus on marine and maritime governance both within the European Union and beyond. The fundamental challenge that European policymakers must address is how to achieve a sustainable use of the oceans that ensures that marine goods and services are available for future generations, while meeting the demands of human population growth and economic growth.

In the Mediterranean biogenic habitat built by coralline algae (orders Corallinales, Hapalidiales and Sporolithales) show a great diversity and a large bathymetric extent. The genus Lithophyllum is the most species-diverse coralline genus. and plays a key role in the formation of extensive bioconstructions, as the coralligenous concretions in the circalittoral and the “trottoirs” in the mid littoral. As part of a large-scale investigation of the marine bioconstructions of the Italian shores, we account here some results on the distribution, diversity and ecology for L. byssoides, L. cabiochae and L. stictaeforme.

This volume contains the main results of the EC FP7 “The Ocean of Tomorrow” Project CoCoNet, divided in two sections: 1) a set of guidelines to design networks of Marine Protected Areas in the Mediterranean and the Black Seas; 2) a smart wind chart that will allow evaluating the possibility of installing Offshore Wind Farms in both seas. The concept of Cells of Ecosystem Functioning, based on connectivity, is introduced to define natural units of management and conservation. The definition of Good Environmental Status, as defined in the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, is fully embraced to set the objectives of the project, by adopting a holistic approach that integrates a full set of disciplines, ranging from physics to bio-ecology, economics, engineering and many sub-disciplines. The CoCoNet Consortium involved scientist sfrom 22 states, based in Africa, Asia, and Europe, contributing to build a coherent scientific community.

Darwin is the father of evolutionary theory because he identified evolutionary patterns and, with Natural Selection, he ascertained the exquisitely ecological ultimate processes that lead to evolution. The proximate processes of evolution he proposed, however, predated the discovery of genetics, the backbone of modern evolutionary theory. The later discovery of the laws of inheritance by Mendel and the rediscovery of Mendel in the early 20th century led to two reforms of Darwinism: Neo- Darwinism and the Modern Synthesis (and subsequent refinements). If Darwin’s evolutionary thought required much refinement, his ecological insight is still very modern. In the first edition of The Origin of Species, Darwin did not use either the word “evolution” or the word “ecology”. “Ecology” was not coined until after the publication of the Origin. Evolution, for him, was the origin of varieties, then species, which he referred to as well-marked varieties, whereas, instead of using ecology, he used “the economy of nature”. The Origin contains a high proportion of currently accepted ecological principles. Darwin labelled himself a naturalist. His discipline (natural history) was a blend of ecology and evolution in which he investigated both the patterns and the processes that determine the organization of life. Reductionist approaches, however, often keep the two disciplines separated from each other, undermining a full understanding of natural phenomena that might be favored by blending ecology and evolution through the development of a modern Theory of Natural History based on Darwin’s vision of the study of life.

This volume contains the main results of the EC FP7 “The Ocean of Tomorrow” Project CoCoNet, divided in two sections: 1) a set of guidelines to design networks of Marine Protected Areas in the Mediterranean and the Black Seas; 2) a smart wind chart that will allow evaluating the possibility of installing Offshore Wind Farms in both seas. The concept of Cells of Ecosystem Functioning, based on connectivity, is introduced to define natural units of management and conservation. The definition of Good Environmental Status, as defined in the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, is fully embraced to set the objectives of the project, by adopting a holistic approach that integrates a full set of disciplines, ranging from physics to bio-ecology, economics, engineering and many sub-disciplines. The CoCoNet Consortium involved scientist sfrom 22 states, based in Africa, Asia, and Europe, contributing to build a coherent scientific community., peer-reviewed