The deep-sea communities include many of the most charismatic habitat forming species found on marine seabed such as cold-water corals and sponges, and these can be extremely slow-growing species and highly sensitive to human impacts. Deep-sea ecosystems are in general poorly known, mainly because of the practical and logistical challenges involved when surveying these.

Bottom fishing can have highly detrimental impacts on deep-sea benthic organisms, especially those that are fragile. There is thus intensive effort worldwide and in Spanish waters to locate, map and describe such habitats to alleviate further impacts, and species distribution models can be useful for this purpose.

Within Spanish waters, number of sites have been mapped and protected as these harbour sensitive habitats and species. Within the deeper parts of the maritime area of the Murcia region, several areas with impressive seascapes can be found. Part of this area has already been surveyed in a cruise organised by the INTEMARES earlier this year and in that cruise, cold-water corals were found. This area is thus likely to be of high conservation importance and may be protected in coming years.

This area will be surveyed in two other cruises organised by the INTEMARES project in coming years.

This project aims to describe and map the benthic fauna and habitats and to evaluate the risk of human activities to these in the waters in the Murcia Region, more specifially Escarpe de Mazarrón canyon system and surrounding areas, the seamount Seco de Palos and an adjacent pockmark area. The project comprises of three work packages.

Work Package 1: Benthic communities and habitats (with emphasis of habitat forming organisms) are described and mapped and the environmental variables that are most important in explain species composition, diversity and spatial distribution patterns are identified. Preliminary species distribution models will be prepared.

Work Package 2: VMS data for several demersal fishing gears for the period 2009-2016 will be analysed to provide estimates of the spatial distribution effort.

Work Package 3: The results from previous work packages will be integrated to evaluate the risk of fishing activities on vulnerable marine ecosystems (VME) indicator species and habitats. The findings will be disseminated in a per reviewed article in addition to various other forms of dissemination, including to the public.

This research will provide information on the deep-sea benthic communities and habitats in the waters off Murcia that will contribute to the process of conserving these with establishment of marine protected areas. This mobility grant will have mutual benefits for me as a researcher and the host team.

I will benefit by joining a research team with of a highest calibre and will provide a possibility to analyse data jointly in a novel manner and broaden the scope of my research. The host team will benefit from my expertise in benthic ecology, which is currently lacking at IEO Murcia.

This project will involve a strong collaboration with projects within Spain, including INTEMARES and CAMONMAR2. I will use my research networks (e.g EU H2020 projects and ICES) to increase the scope of the project and to ensure that IEO Murcia will be part of future in EU consortiums.