OBJECTIVES

SUMMER will establish a protocol to accurately estimate mesopelagic fish biomass, quantify the ecosystem services provided by the mesopelagic community (food for aquaculture, for humans, for other wild fish, climate regulation and potential for bioactive compounds) and develop a decision support tool to quantitatively balance the trade-offs between the different services for any given exploitation scenario.

The overall objective of SUMMER is to evaluate whether and how mesopelagic resources can be exploited without compromising the essential ecosystem services they provide. The specific objectives of SUMMER are:

  • Determine the best combination of Methods (including submersible broad-band acoustics, environmental DNA (eDNA) and Scientific trawls) to obtain unbiased biomass and biodiversity estimates of the mesopelagic community.
  • Estimate global abundance of mesopelagic fish based on a combination of the developed methods and models.
  • To quantify the bycatch and impact on biodiversity of fishing (WP2).
  • To measure the role of mesopelagic organisms in the vertically integrated Food web, its “service” as food for commercially fished species, deep-sea species and emblematic species and to model the effects of different fishing scenarios on trophic network stability (WP3).
  • To estimate the carbon sequestration due to active migration relative to the gravitational flux and to model the effects of different fishing scenarios (WP4).
  • To explore the potential of mesopelagic organisms for pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products, processed human Food and animal feed, and to evaluate the intangible value of the ecosystem for production of high-value products (WP5).
  • To provide a holistic assessment of the services provided by the mesopelagic ecosystem and to establish trade-offs and tipping points between different services under different fishing harvest rates scenarios (WP6).
  • To engage managers, stakeholders and society on defining strategies and Associated risks to use mesopelagic resources, proposing strategies for its sustainability (WP6 and WP7).

IMPACT

Short-term impacts for SUMMER H2020:

  • Increase the knowledge of mesopelagic zone ecosystems.
  • Contribute to the UN SDG 14 targets to effectively regulate marine harvesting and sustainably manage of the Paris Agreements of 2015, COP22 and UN SDG 13.
  • Contribute to preserve the ecological functioning of the mesopelagic zone in line with the EU targets of halting the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
  • Contribute to the preservation of process regulating climate and to the mitigation of impacts of climate change.
  • Foster innovation for food and nutrition Security and other biobased value chains, biodiversity preservation and climate resilience.

RESULTS

Online fish estimator model
This tool is part of the D4.3 of SUMMER (Model tools for quantifying role of mesopelagic fish in influencing the BCP) and provides a means of exploring how harvesting mesopelagic fish may impact climate regulation services by impacting the flow of carbon through the ecosystem. The user can see how changing a parameter influences the other components in response. For example, the user can explore how changing fish mortality, as a proxy for fishing, may influence the carbon fluxes to detritus and migrating copepods which represent two aspects of the climate regulation; the gravitational and active fluxes.
Access the platform https://summer-mesopelagic.shinyapps.io/summer/

Ecosystem services trade-offs Bayesian network
Description This decision support tool (DST) is part of the D6.2 of SUMMER (A parameterized interface (Bayesian network) to determine the trade-offs and overall change in the value of the ecosystem services). The DST allows to explore the trade-offs considering uncertainties under mesopelagic fishing scenarios and different sequestration valuation approaches. It can be explored to answer “what if” in each of the fishing scenarios in relation to no fishing scenario, or the trade-offs of preservation and maximization of the value of two key provisioning species.
Access the platform https://aztidata.es/BayesNetVis/

WORKPACKAGES

Work Package Leader: UBREMEN
Partners: UBREMEN, AZTI, USTAN, IMAR, UKRI, GEOMAR, UiO, UiB, ULR, IFREMER, USTRATH, ULPGC, HI,
LEITAT, MFRI, KAUST.
Duration: 2019 – 2024

A key element of the mechanism for delivering WP1 is to appoint an information specialist with experience in marine science who will act as a project hub facilitator between SUMMER partners and existing open science resources:

  1. the European Nucleotides Archive (ENA) (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena),
  2. Data Publisher for Earth and Environmental Science (PANGAEA) (http://www.pangaea.de),
  3. EU-funded open access digital repository (ZENODO) (https://zenodo.org),
  4. H2020’s research monitoring infrastructure (OpenAIRE) (https://www.openaire.eu), and
  5. the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) (http://www.emodnet.eu).

Work Package Leader: USTAN
Partners: USTAN, AZTI, IMAR, UiO, CSIC, ULR, IFREMER, ULPGC, IRD, DTU, HI, SO, METU, MFRI.
Duration: 2019 – 2024

The general goal of this WP is to achieve, using a combination of cutting-edge technologies and approaches, the best and most comprehensive knowledge of the biomass and biodiversity of the mesopelagic ecosystem.

Specific objectives:

• Estimate the biomass of the mesopelagic community (comprising e.g. fish, crustaceans, cephalopods and gelatinous organisms including siphonophores).

• Quantify the taxonomic and functional biodiversity of the mesopelagic community.

• Estimate the proportion that fish contribute to the overall mesopelagic community biomass.

• Provide an estimation of the biomass of organisms migrating and thus contributing to the downward transport of carbon (active flux)

• Deliver, from previous findings, a best-practice standard operating procedure for how to estimate biomass of mesopelagic fish (e.g. for ecosystem-based fisheries management).

Work Package Leader: IMAR
Partners: IMAR, UiB, CSIC, ULR, IFREMER, USTRATH, DTU, HI, METU, MFRI.
Duration: 2019 – 2024

The main goal of this WP is to investigate the consequences of mesopelagic exploitation for the structure, function and stability of pelagic food webs, including their overall productivity, energy and essential compounds transfer efficiency across trophic levels and functional groups. To do so, existing and novel observations on mesopelagic community and their prey and predators will be combined to parameterize a suite of models that will be used to predict the ecosystem responses to harvesting scenarios. Outputs from this WP will feed the evaluation of ecosystem services provided by mesopelagic communities (WP6).

Specific objectives will be:

• To quantify the prey-mesopelagic-predator trophic and competitive interactions.

• To identify key species/functional groups and interactions controlling the flux of energy and biomass within the vertically integrated pelagic ecosystem.

• To quantify pelagic food-webs response to mesopelagic harvesting and assess their sensitivities.

• To predict impacts from harvesting on the resilience and services of pelagic ecosystems.

Work Package Leader: UKRI
Partners: UKRI, USTAN, UiO, UiB, IFREMER, ULPGC, IRD
Duration: 2019 – 2024

The WP objective is to estimate the role of mesopelagic organisms on carbon sequestration and climate regulation.

Specific objectives:

• To provide the first simultaneous quantification of the active flux due to mesopelagic organisms relative to other fluxes

• To determine the influence of mesopelagic organisms on the connected fluxes comprising the biological carbon pump

• To provide the first quantification of the role of mesopelagic organisms in ocean carbon storage and atmospheric CO2.

• To deliver a tool to allow further predictions and scenarios to be explored for management using a range of IPCCclass models.

• Provide information and tools to support management decisions on exploitation of mesopelagic organisms.

Work Package Leader: GEOMAR
Partners: GEOMAR, AZTI, SO, LEITAT, BARNA SA, KAUST
Duration: 2019 – 2024

The aim of this WP is assessing the potential of mesopelagic micro- and macro-organisms for use as raw material for feed, nutraceutical or pharmaceutical industries.

Specific objectives will be:

• To identify and assess fat and protein content (including omega-3 fatty acids and protein hydrolysates) of key mesopelagic macro-organisms (fish and other organisms) for yield, stability and bioactivity for feed and nutraceutical applications.

• To assess the microbial diversity and chemical machinery of culturable microorganisms associated with mesopelagic organisms for pharmaceutical lead compounds.

• To assess/predict the microbial diversity and chemical capacity of bacterial metagenomes for omega-3 fatty acids, enzymes and high value secondary metabolites for potential industrial applications.

Work Package Leader: AZTI
Partners: AZTI, GEOMAR, SO, LEITAT, BARNA SA, KAUST

Duration: 2019 – 2024

The main objectives will be to contribute to the general objective of SUMMER of understanding the socio-economic consequences of exploiting the mesopelagic organisms.

Specific objectives:

• SUMMER will provide an economic, social wellbeing and governance evaluation of the trade-offs among ecosystem services arising from the different harvest strategies proposed under WP3 of mesopelagic organisms, under different climate scenarios (WP4), of the different ecosystem services provided by the mesopelagic ecosystem.

• Contribute in a multi-actor approach, towards the development of a visualization tool that demonstrates scenarios of consequences of exploiting the mesopelagic organisms. In this tool, potential trade-offs arising from the exploitation will be displayed and economically assessed. An analysis of the technical requirements to exploit the mesopelagic layer will be contrasted against the regulations and overall objectives (“Blue growth”), and management targets at EU, European and global levels.

Work Package Leader: SO
Partners: SO, AZTI, UBREMEN, UKRI, GEOMAR, UiO, ULR, USTRATH, ULPGC, METU, LEITAT, MFRI, KAUST
Duration: 2019 – 2024

The Overall aim of WP7 is to coordinate the official dissemination, communication and exploitation of the results of SUMMER to stakeholders, the scientific community, the general public, management authorities, policy makers and research managers.

The specific objectives are:

• To conduct the general dissemination and communication of the results achieved and competences developed in SUMMER to different target groups (fishing industry, fisheries management, stock assessment scientists, fisheries enforcement agencies, equipment suppliers and society at large) and promote their future development and use;

• Maximise the visibility of the project to the intended target groups from the industry, stakeholders, governance institutions, and scientific community, and

• Maximise the exploitation potential of project results and coordinate the preparations for post-project exploitation

Work Package Leader: AZTI
Partners: AZTI, UBREMEN, USTAN, IMAR, UKRI, GEOMAR, SO
Duration: 2019 – 2024

The objectives of this WP will be:
• General coordination of the project, including the management and fulfilment of responsibilities towards the European Commission and Consortium commitments, including gender equality issues.
• To ensure the activity of the project from the start, full participation of all partners, ensure the execution of the contract in a timely and efficient way and ensure the achievement of all project objectives.
• Organisation of the project regular steering meetings, and supervision of the complementary meetings (e.g. cruise organisation meetings, meetings with stakeholders).
• Communication with the advisory panel, dissemination and implementation of the advice.
• Monitor the expenses and allocation of the budget; ensure accurate and timely financial reporting, ensure reporting by the contracting units.
• To establish and maintain the appropriate communication channels within the consortium and with the European Commission.
• To establish appropriate coordination - cooperation mechanisms with other projects (national, EU or international) related to the mesopelagic ecosystem to maximize the use of the resources allocated to SUMMER.

Work Package Leader: AZTI
Partners: AZTI
Duration: 2019 – 2024

The objective is to ensure compliance with the ‘ethics requirements’ set out in this work package.