Francesc Ordines

• PhD
• Researcher at Instituto Español de Oceanografia

Fig. 3. Digital terrain models derived from swath bathymetry. Each subfigure includes two density functions, yellow and black for trawled and not trawled areas, respectively. (a) Color coded seabed depth in m and enhanced by shade effect. (b) Seabed slope value in degrees. (c) Orientation of the seabed, where different colors indicate the direction...

Linking the abiotic and biotic traits of ecosystems is a critical step towards understanding their structure and functioning. Here we attempt to determine the connections between the hydrodynamics, benthic landscape and the associated fish communities on the coastal continental shelf off the Balearic Islands (western Mediterranean). Specifically we...

An important effort has been made to develop diversity indices suitable to monitor the loss of biodiversity due to anthropogenic impacts in an accurate and comprehensible way. Here, N90, a diversity index based on the species’ contribution to the similarity between samples in a group, is presented. N90 uses the results of the classic Similarity Per...

Scorpaena notata is a small, sedentary scorpaenid species widely distributed in the Mediterranean and adjacent waters of the Atlantic. In the western Mediterranean it inhabits coastal continental shelf bottoms. In the Balearic Islands, these bottoms are characterised by the presence of the facies with red algae, including both Peyssonnelia and mäer...

This study analyses for the first time the genetic diversity, connectivity, and evolutionary dynamics of the small red scorpionfish (Scorpaena notata) in the Balearic Islands, using two mitochondrial DNA markers: Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) and the Control Region (CR). Nucleotide diversity of the COI gene was found to be low compared to ot...

The bamboo coral Isidella elongata (Esper, 1788) is a near-endemic species of the Mediterranean Sea, which forms dense aggregations on bathyal muddy bottoms and contributes to the three-dimensional structure of bathyal environments. Isidella elongata populations have experienced a regression since the middle of the last century; it has been attribu...

This study analyzes for the first time the genetic diversity, connectivity, and evolutionary dynamics of the small red scorpionfish (Scorpaena notata) in the Balearic Islands based on mitochondrial DNA. Nucleotide diversity of the Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene was found to be low compared to other commercial fish species, suggesting tha...

We studied the life‐history traits of the brown skate (Raja miraletus) population off the Balearic Islands, which is a species commonly caught as bycatch by the bottom trawl fishery in the Western Mediterranean. Samples and data were collected year‐round from commercial catches and yearly during spring–summer from the International Bottom Trawl Sur...

This review evaluates the current knowledge of essential biological traits (diet, fecundity, maturity, length-weight relationships, spawning, growth, lifespan, and natural mortality) of marine fishes across European and adjacent waters. These traits are crucial for ecosystem modeling and stock assessments. Using data from FishBase, the largest and...

Rhodolith beds and Laminaria rodriguezii forests constitute marine habitats of high conservation value. In the Menorca Channel (Balearic Islands, Western Mediterranean) rhodolith beds predominate in the sedimentary bottoms of the continental shelf and in some areas, these bottoms present an erect stratum with L. rodriguezii. Bottom trawling has neg...

Benthic species and habitats are receiving increasing attention in the framework of European regulations such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the implementation of the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management by the current EuropeanM Union Common Fishery Policy. As a consequence, scientific surveys initially designed to asse...

Despite the high diversity of elasmobranch fishes in the Balearic Islands, knowledge of their biology and population dynamics is still scarce. A recent mark-and-recapture experiment off the Balearic Islands tagged 3738 individuals of 23 shark and batoid species during MEDITS and CANAL bottom trawl scientific surveys from June 2021 to August 2023. R...

The sponge Axinella venusta Idan, Shefer, Feldstein & Ilan, 2021, recently described from the mesophotic zone off the coast of Israel (Levantine Sea), is recorded for second time from the western Mediterranean. Two specimens of A. venusta were collected at the summit of the Emile Baudot seamount, at the Mallorca channel (Balearic Islands). The spec...

The sponge fauna of the Western Mediterranean stands as one of the most studied in the world. Yet sampling new habitats and a poorly studied region like the Balearic Islands highlights once again our limited knowledge of this group of animals. This work focused on demosponges of the order Tetractinellida collected in several research surveys (2016–...

A new species belonging to the ophiuroid genus Ophiomyxa is described from the Mallorca Channel seamount, in the western Mediterranean Sea. It can be distinguished from other Ophiomyxa species by the lack of interradial marginal plates, three arm spines, the presence of two thin, transparent and completely perforated dorsal arm plates on each arm s...

Available information and potential data gaps for non-fish marine organisms (cnidarians, crustaceans, echinoderms, molluscs, sponges, mammals, reptiles, and seabirds) covered by the global database SeaLifeBase were reviewed for eight marine ecosystems (Adriatic Sea, Aegean Sea, Baltic Sea, Bay of Biscay/Celtic Sea/Iberian Coast, Black Sea, North Se...

Within the context of the ecosystem approach to fisheries management, an ecosystem model was developed for the Balearic Islands in the early 2000s, covering from 0 to 800 m of depth. The aim of the study was to describe the structure and functioning of the ecosystem together with the fishing impacts. The results show that the biomass of the primary...

Pinnotheres pisum (Linnaeus, 1767) is one of the pinnotherid crab species with the highest number of reported bivalve hosts. Here we first report this species living in the bivalve Glossus humanus (Linnaeus, 1758), and provide an update on P. pisum symbiotic associations (i.e., known hosts), reaching up to 34 taxa. Partial sequences of the mitocho...

Gymnesigobius medits is reported for the first time after a recent description recorded from the Balearic Islands and from the slope of the Gulf of Vera on the Iberian Peninsula coast. The record from the Emile Baudot seamount on the Balearic Islands represents the deepest positive benthic gobiiform species record in general. The presence of the me...

The Spanish bottom trawl fleet operating in the Mediterranean currently uses 40 mm square mesh codends. Its selectivity is still too low to overcome the overall problem of high proportions of immature specimens in the catches. Even for some target species such as the European hake (Merluccius merluccius), there are high proportions of individuals s...

More than half of the Mediterranean sharks and rays are threatened by fishing exploitation. However, population assessments are limited by the scarcity of specific data on fishing catches. In this study, we assessed temporal trends of the indicators developed within the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive over the last two decades in order...

Blache's flounder, Arnoglossus blachei Stauch, 1965, is redescribed from the eastern Atlantic (Morocco south to Namibia, including the Canary Islands, larvae reaching South Africa) and distinguished from the imperial flounder A. imperialis (Rafinesque, 1810) by having a live colouration of the lower side of males which is bright red (whitish in A....

Fisheries management requires the best scientific knowledge on the exploitation and conservation status of stocks. This is challenging for by-catch species, for which necessary data for their assessment is more limited than for target ones. That is the case for the thornback ray, Raja clavata, in the Balearic Islands (western Mediterranean), whose...

Resum: Es presenta la caracterització preliminar dels fons detrítics dominats per macroalgues d’Eivissa i Formentera, entre 53 i 81 m de fondària. S’han identificat quatre tipus de fons: (i) fons de Corallinales no geniculades; (ii) fons de rodòlits amb dominància de Spongites fruticulosus; (iii) praderies mixtes de Laminaria rodriguezii, Fucales i...

A new species of dragonet, Synchiropus flavistrigatus sp. n. from the eastern tropical Atlantic, is described on the basis of 15 specimens. The new species is characterised within the subgenus Yerutius Whitley, 1931 by having 8 rays in the second dorsal fin (the last divided at its base), 8 anal-fin rays (the last divided at its base), 20–21 pector...

El coneixement sobre biodiversitat a les Illes Balears es troba dispers i, pel que fa a molts de grups, desactualitzat o mai s’ha arribat a estudiar en profunditat. Aquest projecte té dos objectius principals. Per una banda, reunir i posar a disposició d’investigadors, gestors i el públic en general informació actualitzada sobre totes les espècies...

Seamounts are globally important and essential ecosystems for supporting and maintaining marine biodiversity. In the Mallorca Channel, three prominent seamounts are present: Ausias March, Ses Olives and Emile Baudot. Currently, this area is being evaluated for inclusion in the Natura 2000 network. For this objective three surveys were conducted in...

Elasmobranchs are a vulnerable group that has been overexploited for almost half a century in the Mediterranean. However, few elasmobranch species have been assessed because information on their basic biological parameters is lacking for most species. Raja polystigma is a poorly studied endemic skate in the Mediterranean. The aim of this work is to...

Exploited fish species may have or are experiencing declines in population sizes coupled with changes in their environmental conditions owing to global change. Declining populations might lead to a decrease in genetic diversity, which in turn may produce losses of adaptive potential to face current and future environmental changes. Thus, this study...

The distribution of P. blennoides (3418 individuals) was studied using data collected between 170-779 m depth during two bottom trawl surveys developed on 2003 and 2004. Additionally, the total length (TL in cm) was obtained from 1050 individuals sampled from commercial fisheries in Algerian ports (i.e. Annaba, Azeffoun, Dellys, Cap Djinet, Zemmour...

One of the objectives of the LIFE IP INTEMARES project is to assess the impact of bottom trawling on the vulnerable benthic habitats of the circalittoral bottoms of the Menorca Channel (western Mediterranean), designated a Site of Community Importance (SCI) within the Natura 2000 network. The present study compares the epibenthic communities of fou...

Exploited fish species may have or are experiencing declines in population sizes coupled with a decrease in genetic diversity. This can lead to the loss of adaptive potential to face current and future environmental changes. However, little is known about this subject while research on it is urgently needed. Thus, this study aims to answer a simple...

Species diversity in a community is mainly related to the number and abundance of species that form it. N90 is a recently developed diversity index based on the results of the similarity percentage (SIMPER) analysis that represents the number of species contributing up to ninety percent of within-group similarity in a group of samples. The calculat...

The Alboran Sea and the Balearic Islands are two contrasting areas in terms of primary productivity. The former is among the most productive areas of the whole Mediterranean Sea, whereas the Balearic Islands is among the less productive ones in the western Mediterranean. The two areas also show different patterns in the bottom trawl fishing footpri...

The genus Coris contains 28 valid species, most of them with an Indo-Pacific distribution and only two species recognized from the eastern Atlantic: Coris atlantica and C. julis. This last species has a large variability in its coloration, which caused that during the first half of XIX century the sexes were considered as different species. Two liv...

The high discards rates of non-commercial benthic species is one of the main problems of the Mediterranean bottom trawl fishery developed on the continental shelf. The present work analyzes data from 22 bottom trawls, carried out in parallel by two commercial trawlers between 70 and 90 m depth on maërl beds off eastern Menorca (Balearic Islands). O...

Independence of science and best available science are fundamental pillars of the UN-FAO code of conduct for responsible fisheries and are also applied to the European Union (EU) Common Fishery Policy (CFP), with the overarching objective being the sustainable exploitation of the fisheries resources. CFP is developed by DG MARE, the department of t...

Background The seamounts Ses Olives (SO), Ausias March (AM) and Emile Baudot (EB) at the Mallorca Channel (Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean), are poorly explored areas containing rich and singular sponge communities. Previous works have shown a large heterogeneity of habitats, including rhodolith beds, rocky, gravel and sandy bottoms and ste...

The poorly known sponge species Axinella vellerea (Topsent, 1904), Acarnus levii (Vacelet, 1960) and Haliclona poecillastroides (Vacelet, 1969) are reported from bottom-trawl samples off the Balearic Islands, Western Mediterranean. A re-description is provided for all three species and the Folmer fragment of cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) obtai...

The objective of this study was to determine the population distribution and some biological aspects for fish stock assessment of the greater forkbeard Phycis blennoides along the Algerian basin. The distribution of P. blennoides (3418 individuals) was studied using data collected between 170-779 m depth during two bottom trawl surveys developed on...

The data of Phycis blennoides comes from bottom-trawl surveys (2003-2004), caught between 170 and 779 m along the Algerian coast. Additionally, commercial fish samples of P. blennoides were obtained from 11 Algerian ports between 2013 and 2017. The dataset presented is composed of: Biological parameters of commercial specimens across seasons: mean...

It is well known that bottom trawling affects the abiotic (seafloor morphology, sediment resuspension, water turbidity) and biotic components (biodiversity, biomass and production) of habitats. However, comparative studies on the effect of trawling on epi-benthic communities of sedimentary bottoms are scarce. One of the objectives of LIFE IP INTEMA...

Based on geophysical (multibeam echosounder and very high resolution parametricprofiles) and sedimentological (Shipek dredge) data acquired during the INTEMARES-CANAL0419 expedition,different geomorphologic features have been identified. The study area is located in the continental shelf of the Menorca Channel between 37 and 116 m water depth(mwd)....

The epinonid fish genus Microichthys Rüppell 1852 is reviewed. The genus includes three valid species: M. coccoi Rüppell 1852 and M. sanzoi Spartà 1950 from the Mediterranean Sea; M. atlanticus sp. nov. from the Azores, northeastern Atlantic Ocean, characterized by the following combination of characters: dorsal-fin rays VII + I, 8-9; anal-fin rays...

Many deep‐water fish populations, being K‐selected species, have little resilience to overexploitation and may be at serious risk of depletion as a consequence. Sea warming represents an additional threat. In this study, the condition, or health, of several populations of common ling (Molva molva), blue ling (Molva dypterygia) and Mediterranean or...

Chondrichthyans are a vulnerable group that has been overexploited for almost half a century in the Mediterranean. Since in this area most chondrichthyans are rarely incorporated into international statistics, the impact of fishing on their populations is difficult to assess. Here, we evaluate temporal trends in order to understand the recent histo...

El LIC del Canal de Menorca posee un área total de 335.353,6 hectáreas totalmente marinas y conecta las islas de Mallorca y Menorca, en el Archipiélago Balear. Comprende una plataforma continental de hasta 100 m de profundidad y un talud superior, que alcanza los 400 m, e incluye tanto hábitats costeros como profundos. Su posición geográfica en la...

The state of marine systems subject to natural or anthropogenic impacts can be generally summarized by suites of ecological indicators carefully selected to avoid redundancy. Length-based indicators capture the status of fish community structure, fulfilling the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requirement for Descriptor 3 (status of comme...

A new goby species, Lebetus patzneri sp. nov. (Teleostei: Gobiidae) is described based on two preserved and two photographed specimens collected from two circalittoral bottom locations off the Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean. It differs from the one or both other Lebetus species by each of following characters: P 15-16; D2 segmented fin ray...

In this study we investigated the spatio-temporal distribution of gurnards (8 species of Triglidae and one species of Peristediidae) in the northern Mediterranean Sea using 22 years of MEDITS bottom trawl survey data (1994-2015). Gurnards showed significant differences in terms of abundance, dominance and composition among geographical sub-areas an...

A new approach to recruitment overfishing diagnosis is presented. We hypothesize that condition of recruits should increase when recruitment failures are caused by fishing activity. This would be a consequence of the increase in trophic resource availability, because the population is smaller than that which the ecosystem could support. Temporal se...

The high species richness, coupled with high proportion of endemism, makes the Mediterranean one of the world's 'biodiversity hotspots'. However, the continuous increase in fisheries in the last few decades has led to the overex-ploitation of their main commercial stocks. Using fishery-independent data collected under the framework of the MEDITS tr...

The uncertainty in age estimation by otolith reading may be at the root of the large variability in red mullet (Mullus barbatus) growth models in the Mediterranean. In the MEDITS survey, red mullet age data are produced following the same sampling protocol and otolith reading methodology. However, ageing is assigned using different interpretation s...

The recently described Mediterranean goby species, Buenia massutii, was found at the deep shelf in the Gulf of Cádiz (north‐eastern Atlantic Ocean). The identification of the specimen was performed using morphological analysis and molecular techniques; including the sequencing of the mitochondrial genes Cytochrome c Oxidase I (DNA barcode) and Cyto...

The first record of the ophiuroid family Ophiohelidae from the Mediterranean Sea is reported. It consists of the description of the new record of Ophiomyces grandis from the Mallorca Channel seamounts in the Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean, where it shows high abundances. We present both the morphological description of the individuals coll...

Information on the distribution of small benthic fish such as gobies is sometimes scattered or incomplete. This is probably due to the sampling difficulties involved in the study of these small fishes at depths below those accessible for SCUBA diving techniques. These are the cases of Buenia massutii Kovačić, Ordines et Schliewen, 2017 (recently de...

A new genus and species of goby, Gymnesigobius medits sp. nov., is described from the western Mediterranean slope bottoms at the Balearic Islands. The new goby belongs to the Gobius-lineage (Gobiinae). Examination of the single known specimen exhibits a unique combination of morphological characters which could not be fitted to any known genus. Gym...

The holothurian Parastichopus tremulus, a species only know from the north-eastern Atlantic, is reported for the first time from the Mediterranean Sea. Five individuals of the species were collected in the vicinity of the Seco de los Olivos sea mount in May 2017 from a bottom trawl sample carried out during the MEDITS trawl survey. Scanning Electro...

• Since the 1990s, most currently assessed Mediterranean nekto‐benthic stocks have been exploited above maximum sustainable yield and have declined. This study explores the co‐occurrence of essential fish habitats for the most important nekto‐benthic resources exploited by bottom‐trawl fisheries in the western Mediterranean and areas of importance...

The spot-fin porcupinefish, Diodon hystrix Linnaeus, 1758, was first recorded in the Mediterranean by Torchio (1963), from the Gulf of Taranto, Italy. There have been no subsequent records, from this sea, ever since. In this paper, we report a new record of D. hystrix from the Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean, fifty-five years after the firs...

Batoidea (rays, skates and their relatives) is the largest group included in the subclass Elasmobranchii. Mediterranean Batoidea fauna is relatively diverse, characterised by a history of isolation and connectivity resulting from tectonic movements and changes in ocean circulation. The evolutionary histories of Batoidea species in the Mediterranean...

Differences in the condition of the catshark Galeus melastomus in the western Mediterranean (Alboran Sea vs. Balearic Islands): relationship with diet and environmental factors

Background. Microichthys coccoi Rüppell, 1852 was originally described based on a stranded individual collected in the Strait of Messina, Sicily, central Mediterranean. The distribution range of the species is poorly known, as very few individuals have been recorded from Italy, Greece, and Turkey in the Mediterranean, and from the Azores in the nor...

A new gobiid species, Buenia lombartei sp. nov. (Teleostei: Gobiidae) is described from the continental slope off the Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean. The Atlantic species Buenia jeffreysii (Günther, 1867) is redescribed and the first record of Buenia affinis Iljin, 1930 is reported for the islands. A key for the species of genus Buenia is...

Skates (Order Rajiformes) are the most diverse group of chondrichthyan fishes, being characterized by a highly conserved morphology. In particular, dorsal color patterns are widely used as an important diagnostic feature in the identification of species belonging to the genus Raja. However, the intraspecific dorsal color variability (polychromatism...

Background. The Alboran dragonet, Protogrammus alboranensis Fricke, Ordines, Farias et García-Ruiz, 2016, was originally described based on four specimens from Alboran Island, Spain, south-western Mediterranean, collected in 2014 and 2015. This species was previously considered to be endemic to Alboran Island. A surprising new record of this rare s...

In the Mediterranean, the main demersal fish stocks are considered to be exploited above the maximum sustainable yield and seem to be in decline, at least during the last decades. In the present work we explore the potential effects of the application of an essential fish habitat management approach to the demersal fish community and their most imp...

The improvement of fishing technology has been detrimental to the sustainability of fisheries, which is particularly clear for the bottom trawl fishery. Reducing its environmental impact is a key point for the development of a more sustainable fishery. The present work analyzed different possibilities to mitigate the impact of gears on the seabed a...

Background. The reticulated dragonet, Callionymus reticulatus, was originally described based on a single specimen, the holotype from Malaga, Spain, south-western Mediterranean, probably collected before 1831. The holotype is now disintegrated; the specific characteristics are no longer discernible. The species was subsequently recorded from severa...

The present study confirms the presence of the Norwegian skate Dipturus nidarosiensis (Storm, 1881) in the Mediterranean Sea, by means of morphological traits and molecular markers providing the first record of this species in the Alboran Sea. Cannas et al. (2010) reported D. nidarosiensis for the first time in the Mediterranean from specimens capt...

The serious overfishing of most Mediterranean stocks demands urgent reforms of the management measures aiming to guarantee the sustainability of resources, notably when compared with the improvement observed in other European areas. The new EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) constitutes an excellent opportunity to introduce the changes needed for suc...

A new miniature gobiid species, Buenia massutii sp. nov. (Teleostei: Gobiidae) is described from the circalittoral bottom off the Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean. Phylogenetic analysis of the mitochondrial COI-barcoding fragment supports its species-level distinctiveness and the monophyly of the genus Buenia. A description and diagnosis of...

The Mediterranean starry ray, Raja asterias, considered endemic in the Mediterranean, has recently been reported by other authors from Atlantic fisheries in southern Portugal and northern Morocco. There has been, however, no substantiated record of the species outside the Mediterranean. This fact and the easiness of confusion of R. asterias with ot...

The blackchin, Neoscopelus macrolepidotus Johnson, 1863 (known also as large-scaled lanternfish), originally discovered at Madeira, is a globally distributed benthopelagic fish species that inhabits depths between 300 and 1100 m in the tropical and subtropical regions. Despite the sampling site of the original description, the species seems to be v...

Aim Marine conservation often prioritizes measures based on ecosystem diversity, missing important information on the size and structure of communities such as that provided by body size‐spectra ( SS ). While most studies have focussed on temporal or spatial patterns of SS , there is no research investigating their spatial heterogeneity, which is a...

The Mediterranean starry ray, Raja asterias, considered endemic in the Mediterranean, has recently been reported by other authors from Atlantic fisheries in southern Portugal and northern Morocco. There has been, however, no substantiated record of the species outside the Mediterranean. This fact and the easiness of confusion of R. asterias with ot...

Nearly 75% of European fishing vessels belongs to small-scale fisheries (SSF). However, SSF have received little attention compared to industrial fisheries. In the Mediterranean Sea, where the SSF traditionally had a high socio-economic relevance, there is a widespread interest in securing its sustainable exploitation and viability. Here we analyze...

Functional groups are sets of species that play a similar role in a food web. We defined functional groups of fish species based on their morphological characteristics, while using expert knowledge for invertebrates. We measured 9 morphological traits of 72 fish species, and carried out multivariate analyses to assign fish species to functional gro...

This is an example of coastal management and environmental surveillance where geophysical, biological and oceanographic disciplines are geographically linked through Geographic Information Systems in order to evaluate and minimize the environmental impact of civil engineering. Operational needs of the harbor of Maó force the recurring dredge of the...

DNA-based identifications have been used across different taxonomic groups proving to be a useful tool in cases in which external morphological trait-based identification was problematic. Here, we use the DNA barcoding approach to improve the accuracy in the identification of elasmobranch fish species belonging to the Rajidae family, and to investi...

Version with final page numbers.

Protogrammus alboranensis n. sp. is described on the basis of four specimens from the Alboran Sea, western Mediterranean Sea. It is characterized within the genus Protogrammus by a total of nine unbranched rays on the second dorsal fin, eight unbranched rays on the anal fin, a very small preopercular spine with an upcurved main tip and one point on...

A new goby species, Speleogobius llorisi sp. nov. (Teleostei: Gobiidae) is described from the circalittoral sea bed at 46–69 m depth off the Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean. Six specimens, four females and two males, of the new species were collected from beam trawl samples carried out on the red algae beds off the south west coast of Mallo...