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38
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Introduction
Clement Garcia currently works at the Division of Environment and Ecosystems , Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science. Clement does research in Zoology, Marine Biology and Ecology.
Publications
Publications (38)
The Working Group on Fisheries Benthic Impact and Trade-offs (WGFBIT) develops methods
and performs assessments to evaluate benthic impact from fisheries at regional scale, while con-
sidering fisheries and seabed impact trade-offs.
In this report, new fishery benthic impact assessments (ToR A) are shown out for several sub-
regions in (French Medi...
Over the last years, the development of offshore renewable energy installations such as offshore wind farms led to an increasing number of man-made structures in marine environments. Since 2009, benthic impact monitoring programs were carried out in wind farms installed in the southern North Sea. We collated and analyzed data sets from three major...
Biological traits analysis (BTA) provides insight into causes and consequences of biodiversity change that cannot be achieved using traditional taxonomic approaches. However, acquiring information on biological traits (i.e., the behavioural, morphological, and reproductive characteristics of taxa) can be extremely time-consuming, especially for lar...
The Working Group on Fisheries Benthic Impact and Trade-offs (WGFBIT) develops methods
and performs assessments to evaluate benthic impact from fisheries at regional scale, while con-
sidering fisheries and seabed impact trade-offs.
In this report, new fishery benthic impact assessments are carried out for several sub-regions in
the Mediterranean (...
Currently, our understanding of the mechanisms for, and potential functional implications of, changes in seabed assemblages resulting from dredged material disposal is relatively unknown. Based on empirical data from 17 disposal sites, we address this by quantifying the nature and magnitude of shifts in the relative composition of response and effe...
A research agenda is currently developing around predicting the functional response of ecosystems to local alterations of biodiversity associated with anthropogenic activity, but existing conceptual and empirical frameworks do not serve this area well as most lack ecological realism. Here, in order to advance credible projections of future ecosyste...
1. Evidence-based decisions relating to effective marine protected areas as a means of conserving biodiversity require a detailed understanding of the species present. The Caribbean island nation of St Lucia is expanding its current marine protected area network by designating additional no-take marine reserves on the west coast. However, informati...
Bottom trawl fishing is a controversial activity. It yields about a quarter of the world's wild seafood, but also has impacts on the marine environment. Recent advances have quantified and improved understanding of large‐scale impacts of trawling on the seabed. However, such information needs to be coupled with distributions of benthic invertebrate...
There is increasing interest in understanding potential impacts of complex pollutant profiles to long-lived species such as the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas), a threatened megaherbivore resident in north Australia. Dietary ingestion may be a key exposure route for metals in these animals and marine plants can accumulate metals at higher concent...
Fisheries using bottom trawls are the most widespread source of anthropogenic physical disturbance to seafloor habitats. To mitigate such disturbances, the development of fisheries-, conservation-, and ecosystem-based management strategies requires the assessment of the impact of bottom trawling on the state of benthic biota. We explore a quantitat...
Functional trait-based approaches are increasingly adopted to understand and project ecological responses to environmental change, however most assume trait expression is constant between conspecifics irrespective of context. Using two species of benthic invertebrate (brittlestars Amphiura filiformis and A. chiajei) we demonstrate that trait expres...
The Working Group on Electrical Trawling (WGELECTRA), works on improving knowledge of the effects of electrical or pulse fishing on the marine environment. In this report the group provide details of ongoing work including preliminary results, upcoming research projects, and possibilities for international collaboration and scientific publications....
p>There is now strong evidence that ecosystem properties are influenced by alterations in biodiversity. The consensus that has emerged from over two decades of research is that the form of the biodiversity-functioning relationship follows a saturating curve. However, the foundation from which these conclusions are drawn mostly stems from empirical...
Demersal and benthivorous fish depend on prey availability in benthic habitats for their diet. Prey availability may in turn be affected by bottom trawling. Our study attempted to link the prey consumed by fish directly to those available in the benthic environment. We test the hypothesis that bottom trawling significantly affected the trait compos...
Bottom fishing such as trawling and dredging may pose serious risks to the seabed and benthic habitats, calling for a quantitative assessment method to evaluate the impact and guide management to develop mitigation measures. We provide a method to estimate the sensitivity of benthic habitats based on the longevity composition of the invertebrate co...
The possible impacts of the European Commission’s proposed North Sea Multi-Annual Plan are evaluated in terms of its likely outcomes to achieve management objectives for fishing pressure, species’ biomass, fishery yield, the landed value of key species and ecosystem objectives. The method applies management strategy evaluation procedures that emplo...
Technical methods of the uncertainty and MSE routine.
(DOCX)
Consensus has been reached that global biodiversity loss impairs ecosystem functioning and the sustainability of services beneficial to humanity. However, the ecosystem consequences of extinction in natural communities are moderated by compensatory species dynamics, yet these processes are rarely accounted for in impact assessments and seldom consi...
There is an implicit requirement under contemporary policy drivers to understand the characteristics of benthic communities under anthropogenically-unimpacted scenarios. We used a trait-based approach on a large dataset from across the European shelf to determine how functional characteristics of unimpacted benthic assemblages vary between differen...
Local alteration of species abundance in natural communities due to anthropogenic impacts may have secondary, cascading effects on species at higher trophic levels. Such effects are typically hard to single out due to their ubiquitous nature and, therefore, may render impact assessment exercises difficult to undertake. Here we describe how we used...
The combination of high tides, strong winds and low pressure between the 5th and 7th of December 2013 caused a destructive storm surge along the east UK coastline. Along parts of the North Norfolk coast this tidal surge reached higher levels than the devastating surge caused by the 1953 storm. Loss of life due to flooding was avoided due to improve...
While the effects of coastal disposal of dredged material on benthic assemblage structure have been well studied, our understanding of the mechanism of such responses, and their potential ecological implications, remain relatively unknown. Data from a licenced disposal site off the northeast coast of England are analysed to address this and improve...
One of the most widespread yet manageable pressures we impose on the seabed is disturbance of the substrate by towed demersal fishing gear (bottom trawling and dredging). Over the past forty to fifty years, many studies have been conducted specifically aiming to understand the impacts of such fishing gear on the seabed communities. Their outcomes h...
The species–area relationship (SAR) is increasingly being used to set conservation targets for habitat types when designing protected area networks. This approach is transparent and scientifically defensible, but there has been little research on how it is affected by data quality and quantity.
English Channel.
We used a macrobenthic dataset contai...
Biological Traits Analysis (BTA) is a recently proposed method for addressing ecological functioning based on traits exhibited by members of biological assemblages. This multi-trait approach was applied to the soft-bottom subtidal macrobenthic communities of the Mondego estuary (Portugal), aiming to assess its functioning following a management mea...
Polychaetes are a well-represented group in most marine and estuarine environments, both in terms of number of individuals and species; they typically constitute a significant percentage of the total macrofaunal diversity. The aim of our analyses was to characterise the biodiversity and regional distribution patterns of polychaete assemblages from...
Polychaetes are a well-represented group in most marine and estuarine environments, both in terms of number of individuals and species; they typically constitute a significant percentage of the total macrofaunal diversity. The aim of our analyses was to characterise the biodiversity and regional distribution patterns of polychaete assemblages from...
Benthic organisms appear to be accurate proxies for assessing coastal ecosystem structures and changes due to climatic and anthropogenic stresses. Functional studies of benthic systems are relatively recent, mainly because of the difficulties in obtaining the basic parameters for each benthic compartment (i.e. detritus, bacteria, meiofauna and macr...
The eastern English Channel, the narrow channel of water separating northern France and southeast England is an area of intense human use of the array of resources concentrated into its relative small area. The vulnerability of living resources and their habitats brought together French and British maritime experts within a common project (called C...
Readers of our first CHARM I atlas will know that almost everything contained within the atlas was original work resulting from two years of intensive study of the Dover Strait by a dedicated and inter- disciplinary team working from bases on either side of the Channel. The present atlas has carried on this eminent precedent, though this time cover...
Projects
Projects (2)
Improvng the science needed to better understand the effect of man-made structures on the North Sea and better inform any decision making process.
https://www.insitenorthsea.org/projects/
COSM: Investigating food web effects due to man-made structures using Coupled Spatial Modelling (2014-2017)
https://www.insitenorthsea.org/projects/cosm/
http://ecopathinternational.org/project/cosm-insite/
EcoSTAR: Ecosystem level importance of STructures as Artificial Reefs (2020-2023):
https://www.insitenorthsea.org/projects/ecostar-ecosystem-level-importance-of-structures-as-artificial-reefs/
and
http://www.smru.st-andrews.ac.uk/ecostar/
FuECoMMS: Functionality and Ecological Connectivity of Man-Made Structures (2020-2023)
https://www.insitenorthsea.org/projects/functionality-and-ecological-connectivity-of-man-made-structures-fuecomms/
The aim of this programme is to provide definitive advice and mitigation for the effects of new nuclear power station developments on marine and estuarine ecosystems. An inter-disciplinary group of ecologists, fisheries scientists, water quality specialists, geomorphologists and oceanographers work together to predict how the construction and operation of these power stations could impact on the environment and to develop appropriate and innovative mitigations and monitoring strategies.
