MAPMED: MAnagement of Port areas in the MEDiterranean sea basin

Dr Eva Chatzinikolaou (project management, design and implementation of sampling, taxonomic identification), Dr Panagiotis Damianidis (taxonomic identification), Dr Christina Pavloudi (taxonomic identification), Dr Katerina Vasileiadou (taxonomic identification), Dr Sarah Faulwetter (taxonomic identification), Kleoniki Keklikoglou (taxonomic identification), Wanda Plaiti (taxonomic identification), Dimitra Mavraki (data management), Stamatina Nikolopoulou (data management) and Dr Christos Arvanitidis (principal investigator).

Mediterranean touristic ports: Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy), Heraklion (Crete, Greece) and El Kantaoui (Tunisia).

During this study, differences in macrobenthic assemblages were examined across three levels: a) geographical differences (three countries), b) use-sectoral differences (3-5 stations within ports) and c) temporal differences (three seasons in relation to the touristic period).

This project has been financed by the European Union under the ENPI CBC Mediterranean Sea Basin Programme in the framework of the project “MAnagement of Port areas in the MEDiterranean Sea Basin” (MAPMED) (Grand Contract 6/2019-25/ 7/2011). This publication has been supported by the LifeWatchGreece infrastructure (MIS 384676), funded by the Greek Government under the General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT), ESFRI Projects, National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) and from LifeWatch ERIC.

Five replicates of sediment samples were collected from each station using a box corer (13.5 cm × 13.5 cm × 16 cm) manually operated from a small boat. A Garmin 60 CS portable GPS and a depth meter were available on board to record the exact position and depth of each station respectively. The sediment samples were sieved through a 0.5 mm sieve and then fixed and preserved in 5% formaldehyde buffered with seawater and stained with Rose Bengal. The benthic organisms were sorted out of the sediment under a stereoscope, counted and identified down to the lowest possible taxonomic level.

All scientific names were standardised against the World Register of Marine Species using the Taxon Match tool (http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=match) on 10-03-2021.

Three Mediterranean touristic ports were selected as study sites and they are presented in Fig. 1. The port of Cagliari (Fig. 1B) is a large port (2.07 km²) located on the southern coast of Sardinia (Italy). The port of Heraklion (Fig. 1C) is medium-sized (0.87 km²) and it is located on the northern coast of Crete (Greece). The port of El Kantaoui (Fig. 1D) is a small touristic marina (0.04 km²) on the eastern Tunisian coast. Both the ports of Heraklion and Cagliari host a leisure marina, large passenger, cruise and cargo vessels, while El Kantaoui port offers moorings only for smaller fishing boats, luxury yachts and boats for sporting activities. Heraklion port has also a shipyard section.

Figure 1.  

The three Mediterranean touristic ports (A) and location of the sampling stations in Cagliari (B), Heraklion (C) and El Kantaoui (D)

Sampling stations were selected in order to achieve good spatial coverage in each port and also to represent sectors with different uses according to the Water Management Units in MAPMED Action Plans (MAPMED 2015). Four stations were selected in the port of Heraklion, five stations in the port of Cagliari and three stations in the port of El Kantaoui (Table 1).

33.724 and 41.311 Latitude; 7.954 and 27.598 Longitude.

The dataset includes information on macrobenthic assemblages found in the three Mediterranean touristic ports belonging to the following 12 phyla: Annelida, Mollusca, Arthropoda, Echinodermata, Sipuncula, Nemertea, Cnidaria, Phoronida, Chordata, Foraminifera, Platyhelminthes and Priapulida (Table 2).

A total of 46,187 individuals were identified down to the lowest possible taxonomic level, from which 15,535 were found in Cagliari port, 11,571 in Heraklion port and 19,081 in El Kantaoui port. A total of 277 macrofaunal taxa were identified in the three ports, from which 32 were present exclusively in Cagliari port, 22 were found only in Heraklion port and 53 were found only in El Kantaoui port. A total of 96 taxa were common between all three Mediterranean ports (Fig. 2). The highest number of taxa in total was found in El Kantaoui port (206), while Cagliari and Heraklion ports had 170 and 165 taxa in total, respectively.

Figure 2.  

Chart showing number of common and unique taxa in the three Mediterranean ports (Cagliari, Heraklion and El Kantaoui).

Mollusca were the most abundant group (34.7%), Annelida (28.2%) and Arthropoda (24.2%) were also highly represented, while each of the remaining groups contributed less than 5% in the benthic assemblages studied (Fig. 3).

Figure 3.  

Distribution of the different phyla found in the three Mediterranean ports (Cagliari, Heraklion and El Kantaoui).

The percentage of opportunistic taxa abundances (i.e. short-lived taxa often characterising disturbed or stressed habitats) was calculated for each station as the percentage of abundances for Capitellidae, Cirratulidae, Spionidae and Oligochaeta taxa (Pearson and Rosenberg 1978, Munari et al. 2005) in the total sample (Fig. 4). The highest percentages (> 50%) of opportunistic taxa abundances were found in Heraklion port at stations H3 (passenger ships) during all seasons and at H5 (shipyard station) in winter and especially before summer. Additionally, in El Kantaoui station E1 (leisure boats), the percentage of opportunistic taxa abundance increased before summer. The percentage of opportunists in Cagliari was generally lower than in the other ports.

Figure 4.  

Percentage (%) of opportunistic taxa abundances in the different stations of Cagliari port (purple: C1, C2, C3, C4 and C5), Heraklion port (orange: H1, H3, H4 and H5) and El Kantaoui (blue: E1, E2 and E3) during the three differerent sampling seasons (dark colours: winter, medium colours: before summer, light colours: after summer).

Additional statistical analysis has been applied to the species composition matrices of the specific dataset by Chatzinikolaou et al. (2018) and Dimitriou et al. (2020) in order to explore the multivariate patterns of benthic assemblages and to calculate benthic diversity and biotic indices for the assessment of the ecological status of the habitats. A detailed comparison of macrobenthic biodiversity amongst the different locations - sectors - seasons indicated significant differences between ports and between sectors in each port, while seasonal differences were not apparent (Chatzinikolaou et al. 2018).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License. All data in the database can be freely used provided it is fully cited even if only partially used.