Abstract Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VME) in the deep Mediterranean Sea have been
identified by the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean as consisting of …

Two methods traditionally employed to investigate functional diversity in marine benthic
ecosystems are relative taxon composition analysis, which interprets changes in the …

Bottom trawling causes widespread physical disturbance of sediments in seas and oceans
and affects benthic communities by removing target and non-target species and altering …

The 1996 Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act mandates that
regional fishery management councils must designate essential fish habitat (EFH) for each …

Summary 1 Trawling disturbance has wide‐ranging impacts on the marine environment and
is well known to modify benthic habitat and community structure. This has led to speculation …

Bottom trawling causes chronic and widespread disturbance to the seabed in shallow shelf
seas and could lead to changes in the trophic structure and function of benthic communities …

Defining and attaining suitable management goals probably represent the most difficult part
of ecosystem-based fisheries management. To achieve those goals we ultimately need to …

Trawling disturbs benthic communities, eliminating the most vulnerable organisms and
modifying habitat structure. While the cumulative effects of disturbance resulting from …

Long-term data on the North Sea ecosystem are available for phytoplanktonic,
zooplanktonic, benthic, fish, and seabird communities. Temporal changes in these have …

The functional diversity index has shown that the functional diversity of the macrobenthic
community increased along a spatial gradient of distance from the Po river delta (Emilia …