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Healthy and protected coral reefs help island systems in the tropics thrive and survive. Reef passages link the open ocean to lagoon and coastal areas in these ecosystems and are home to an exceptionally diverse and abundant marine life, hosting emblematic species and fish spawning aggregations. Their multiple benefits for the islands and their peoples (e.g., for transport, fishing, socio-cultural aspects) remain yet understudied. Drawing from qualitative interviews with fishers, scuba divers, and surfers along the coast of Grande Terre in New Caledonia, this study highlights the multi-faceted importance of these keystone places. It shows that reef passages are locally deemed ‘communication zones’ between coastal and oceanic spaces and species, and have significant un(der)explored ecological and socio-cultural roles. Understanding and protecting these ecological and cultural keystone places will strengthen both the reef ecosystems and the people dependent on them.

In the South Pacific region, marine territories and resources play a crucial role for local communities. Children engage with these territories and resources from an early age onwards. As the next ocean stewards, they are a stakeholder group whose understandings of ocean connectivity and fisheries should be given serious consideration in decision-making processes towards the sustainable use and management of coastal seas. This paper analyses 290 children's drawings from Fiji and New Caledonia, created in 2019 in spontaneous response to the instruction: "Draw the sea and what you and others do in the sea". Exploring the webs of connections with and within the sea revealed by these children's drawings and their own interpretations leads us to discuss children's representations of the sea: (1) beyond a land-sea compartmentation, (2) as a locus of both exploitation and conservation of marine life, and (3) as a 'place-full' space connecting human and more-than-human realms.

Rocky intertidal communities have proved to be tractable systems for experimental ecology, contributing much to our general understanding of population and community ecology. Physical environmental factors are usually considered strong structuring elements for these assemblages. In this study, we adopted a mixed model sampling design to study the effects of substratum type and shore orientation (i.e. different wave exposure) on intertidal assemblages of Madeira Island (NE Atlantic) across time. We included both macrofauna and macroalgae and compare their abundance and distribution in boulders and rocky platforms on north and south coasts of the island. Generally, assemblages moderately differed between boulders and rocky platforms whereas orientation had little influence on the distribution of most taxa. A high variability was observed across a range of spatial and temporal scales, suggesting that interactions of both physical variables and biological parameters may be influencing distribution of intertidal organisms. The results obtained provide pioneer quantitative data on intertidal assemblages of Madeira.

International audience; While categorized as Small Island Developing States, South Pacific Island nations are the custodians of major ocean areas containing marine resources of high commercial and environmental significance. Yet, these resources are threatened by climate change, overfishing, Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, as well as habitat destruction. The study, carried out in the early stage of the interdisciplinary research project SOCPacific (https://socpacific.net), aims to: a) identify the main policies on which fisheries management is currently based in the South Pacific, particularly in Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu; b) investigate the evolution over time of key issues covered in these policies and related to coastal and/or offshore fisheries sectors; c) trace disconnections on the matter between legally binding instruments and non-binding strategies. A list of more than 200 documents relevant to regional fisheries management was gathered and separated into legally binding instruments and non-binding strategies. Legal instruments focused more on offshore issues (tuna fisheries and IUU fishing) and increasingly covered IUU fishing issues, confirming that tuna fisheries have an established hard policy arena. In strategies pertaining to coastal fisheries, community involvement appears as a key topic and a clear overall trend towards increasingly addressing climate change was spotlighted. Sustainability, community involvement, climate change, and food security issues are more covered in strategies than in legal instruments. Topics mostly addressed in relation to coastal areas are not substantially covered in legal instruments, suggesting that establishing binding measures might not be deemed as beneficial as strategies in coastal fields.

Marine litter is currently worldwide distributed, and plastic is its principal component. Nevertheless, to date, little is known about how this global threat is affecting the marine coastal areas of the Madeira archipelago (NE Atlantic). In this context, we conducted the first comprehensive survey for marine litter characterization in the region, by addressing micro-litter (0.010–5 mm), meso-litter (5–25 mm) and macro-litter (> 25 mm). Our results confirmed that the marine litter issue in Madeira Archipelago is well aligned with what is occurring in other global regions, and plastic is the major component of marine litter, with “plastic-polystyrene” being the most common macro-litter category found. Finally, the different protection status of the sampling areas shows some differences regarding the quantity of macro-litter present as litter abundance in a Marine Protected Area located in the north coast of Madeira has registered lower abundances.

The introduction of non-indigenous species (NIS) in new environments represents a major threat for coastal ecosystems. A good understanding of the mechanisms and magnitude of the impact of NIS colonisation on native ecosystems is becoming increasingly crucial to develop mitigation measures and prevent new invasions. In this present study, we asked if distinct coastal benthic communities from an oceanic island can have different vulnerability to NIS colonisation process. First, PVC settlement plates were deployed for 1 year on the rocky shore of two different locations of Madeira Island (North versus South coast). Then, we implemented a mesocosm experiment where recruited plate communities were maintained under different levels of NIS propagule pressure in order to assess their vulnerability to NIS colonisation process. Results showed that NIS colonisation success was not influenced by the level of propagule pressure, but however, final colonisation patterns varied depending on the origin of the communities. This variability can be attributed to major structural differences between the preponderant species of each community and therefore to the biotic substrate they offer to colonisers. This study highlights how biotic features can alter the NIS colonisation process and importantly, shows that in an urbanisation context, the nature of the resident communities facing invasions risks needs to be closely assessed.