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To enrich spatio-temporal information on the distribution of alien, cryptogenic, and neonative species in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, a collective effort by 173 marine scientists was made to provide unpublished records and make them open access to the scientific community. Through this effort, we collected and harmonized a dataset of 12, 649 records. It includes 247 taxa, of which 217 are Animalia, 25 Plantae and 5 Chromista, from 23 countries surrounding the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Chordata was the most abundant taxonomic group, followed by Arthropoda, Mollusca, and Annelida. In terms of species records, Siganus luridus, Siganus rivulatus, Saurida lessepsianus, Pterois miles, Upeneus moluccensis, Charybdis (Archias) longicollis, and Caulerpa cylindracea were the most numerous. The temporal distribution of the records ranges from 1973 to 2022, with 44% of the records in 2020–2021. Lethrinus borbonicus is reported for the first time in the Mediterranean Sea, while Pomatoschistus quagga, Caulerpa cylindracea, Grateloupia turuturu, and Misophria pallida are first records for the Black Sea ; Kapraunia schneideri is recorded for the second time in the Mediterranean and for the first time in Israel ; Prionospio depauperata and Pseudonereis anomala are reported for the first time from the Sea of Marmara. Many first country records are also included, namely: Amathia verticillata (Montenegro), Ampithoe valida (Italy), Antithamnion amphigeneum (Greece), Clavelina oblonga (Tunisia and Slovenia), Dendostrea cf. folium (Syria), Epinephelus fasciatus (Tunisia), Ganonema farinosum (Montenegro), Macrorhynchia philippina (Tunisia), Marenzelleria neglecta (Romania), Paratapes textilis (Tunisia), and Botrylloides diegensis (Tunisia).

The northern coasts of Cyprus island in the Eastern Mediterranean, are polluted by activities such as growing maritime transportation, recreational usage and tourism activities, conseutively deteriorating marine habitats and disturbing ecosystems. With the enforcement of MARPOL Convention in 1983, a reduction of marine pollution has been observed in all seas and ports of the countries that have accepted it. However, due to the increasing number of ships and growing maritime trade, number of negligences grew, so there was an increase in marine pollution again. Prevention of marine pollution is one of the most important goals of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) which is the enforcing body of MARPOL. The aim of this paper is to investigate and quantify the preventions and precautions practiced in the northern coasts of the Cyprus island. Rules and regulations on marine pollution related subjects, which the ships are held responsible are studied and a questionnaire which covers all relevant and correspondent MARPOL rules is applied to all ships using the northern ports. Results revealed that despite most of the ship practices are satisfactory; many improvements can still be made.

In this Collective Article on alien and cryptogenic diversity in the Mediterranean Sea we report a total of 19 species belonging to nine Phyla and coming from nine countries. Several of these records concern fish species, and of particular interest are the first records of: Terapon puta for Italian waters; Pteragopus trispilus from Malta; Plotosus lineatus from Cyprus; and the northernmost Mediterranean record of Lagocephalus sceleratus. The northernmost Mediterranean record was also reported for the sea urchin Diadema setosum. The portunid crab Thalamita poissonii was recorded for the first time in Libya. The copepod Pseudodiaptomus marinus was recorded for the first time in the Marmara Sea. The polychaete Branchiomma luctuosum was recorded for the first time from the Mediterranean coast of France. The alien anemone Diadumene lineata was recorded for the first time from Slovenia. The macroalgae Sargassum furcatum was recorded for the first time from Italy. The new Mediterranean records here reported help tracing abundance and distribution of alien and cryptic species in the Mediterranean Sea., European Union [730984]; ASSEMBLE Plus project; Greek Ministry of Environment and Energy [OPS 5010856], Francesco Tiralongo and Aylin Ulman are indebted to Francesco Balbini who posted the observation of the species in the Facebook group of the AlienFish project (Fauna Marina Mediterranea) and provided us data ad-ditional on the records. Tuba Terbiyik Kurt, Ximena Ve-lasquez and Tamar Guy-Haim declare that the sampling was performed in the framework of Integrated Marine Pollution Monitoring 2020-2022 Programme carried out by Ministry of Environment and Urbanization/General Directorate of EiA, Permit and Inspection/Department of Laboratory, Measurement and coordinated by TUBI-TAK-MRC ECPI. They also thank Hakan Atabay and Dr. Ibrahim Tan for supplying the zooplankton sample and WGEUROBUS of the International Council for the Ex-ploration of the Sea (ICES)for facilitating this research. Mehmet Goekoglu thanks Hakan Erdoen for the video shoot and Adnan Buyuk for the photo shoot. Joseph A Borg and Julian Evans are grateful to Edward Vella for providing photographs and details on his sighting. The study of Montesanto and Mastrototaro was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement N degrees 730984, ASSEMBLE Plus project. The authors wish to thank G. Chatzigeorgiou and P. Kasapidis for the assistance provided. Sara A.A. Al Mabruk and Fabio Crocetta are grateful to Ashour Al-Slaedie (Libya) for sharing pictures and data of Thalamita poissonii. Jakov Dulcic and Branko Dragicevic are thankful to Mr. Juraj Juricev for provid-ing us data and the photo of the specimen. Daniele Grech was supported by the PO-FEAMP 2014-2020 project ECOGESTOCK Approccio ECOsistemico per la tute-la e la GEStione delle risorse biologiche e STOCK ittici nelle acque interne Priorita 1, Misura 1.44, par. 6 Pesca nelle acque interne e fauna e flora nelle acque interne. The same author would like to thank the colleagues Gianni Brundu, Barbara Loi and Anuta Chindris for field and lab support (IMC, International Marine Centre). The work of Constantinos G. Georgiadis and Dimitra-Lida Rammou has been funded by the Greek Ministry of Environment and Energy within the framework of Marine Strategy monitoring Project (2018-2023; OPS 5010856). The authors would like to thank Dr. Sotiris Orfanidis. The work of Georgiadis and Evangelopoulos has been funded by the Greek Ministry of Environment and Energy within the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. The authors would like to thank Dr. Sotiris Orfanidis. Damla Beton and Mehmet Fatih Huseyinoglu thank the fisher Hasan Sari for providing information and specimens of Plotosus lineatus from Cyprus.

Dietary studies provide key insights into threats and changes within ecosystems and subsequent impacts on focal species. Diet is particularly challenging to study within marine environments and therefore is often poorly understood. Here, we examined the diet of stranded and bycaught loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and green turtles (Chelonia mydas) in North Cyprus (35.33° N, 33.47° E) between 2011 and 2019. A total of 129 taxa were recorded in the diet of loggerhead turtles (n = 45), which were predominantly carnivorous (on average 72.1% of dietary biomass), foraging on a large variety of invertebrates, macroalgae, seagrasses and bony fish in low frequencies. Despite this opportunistic foraging strategy, one species was particularly dominant, the sponge Chondrosia reniformis (21.5%). Consumption of this sponge decreased with increasing turtle size. A greater degree of herbivory was found in green turtles (n = 40) which predominantly consumed seagrasses and macroalgae (88.8%) with a total of 101 taxa recorded. The most dominant species was a Lessepsian invasive seagrass, Halophila stipulacea (31.1%). This is the highest percentage recorded for this species in green turtle diet in the Mediterranean thus far. With increasing turtle size, the percentage of seagrass consumed increased with a concomitant decrease in macroalgae. Seagrass was consumed year-round. Omnivory occurred in all green turtle size classes but reduced in larger turtles (> 75 cm CCL) suggesting a slow ontogenetic dietary shift. Macroplastic ingestion was more common in green (31.6% of individuals) than loggerhead turtles (5.7%). This study provides the most complete dietary list for marine turtles in the eastern Mediterranean.

Este artículo contiene 18 páginas, 4 figuras., Good datasets of geo-referenced records of alien species are a prerequisite for assessing the spatio-temporal dynamics of biological invasions, their invasive potential, and the magnitude of their impacts. However, with the exception of first records on a country level or wider regions, observations of species presence tend to remain unpublished, buried in scattered repositories or in the personal databases of experts. Through an initiative to collect, harmonize and make such unpublished data for marine alien and cryptogenic species in the Mediterranean Sea available, a large dataset comprising 5376 records was created. It includes records of 239 alien or cryptogenic taxa (192 Animalia, 24 Plantae, 23 Chromista) from 19 countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. In terms of records, the most reported Phyla in descending order were Chordata, Mollusca, Chlorophyta, Arthropoda, and Rhodophyta. The most recorded species was Caulerpa cylindracea, followed by Siganus luridus, Magallana sp. (cf. gigas or angulata) and Pterois miles. The dataset includes records from 1972 to 2020, with the highest number of records observed in 2018. Among the records of the dataset, Dictyota acutiloba is a first record for the Mediterranean Sea. Nine first country records are also included: the alga Caulerpa taxifolia var. distichophylla, the cube boxfish Ostracion cubicus, and the cleaner shrimp Urocaridella pulchella from Israel; the sponge Paraleucilla magna from Libya and Slovenia; the lumpfish Cyclopterus lumpus from Cyprus; the bryozoan Celleporaria vermiformis and the polychaetes Prionospio depauperata and Notomastus aberans from Malta., The publication of this article is supported by the Open Access Publishing Fund of the International Association for Open Knowledge on Invasive Alien Species (INVASIVESNET; www.invasivesnet.org). Stelios Katsanevakis, Maria Sini and Konstantinos Tsirintanis were supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) under the “First Call for H.F.R.I. Research Projects to support Faculty members and Researchers and the procurement of high-cost research equipment grant” (Project Number: HFRI-FM17-1597). Enalia Physis acknowledges Pantelis Patsalou for his support with field-logistics and links with fishers. Fiona Tomas would like to acknowledge funding from FECYT FCT- 14-9319 (¡OJO A LAS INVASORAS! BIODIVERSIDAD Y ESPECIES INVASORAS DEL MEDITERRÁNEO BALEAR). Vasilis Gerovasileiou, Thanos Dailianis and Maria Sini acknowledge the support by the MARISCA project (www.marisca.eu), co-funded (85%) by EEA GRANTS, 2009–2014, and the Public Investments Program (PIP) of the Hellenic Republic (15%). Razy Hoffman acknowledges funding by Yad-Hanadiv foundation, through the Israel Society of Ecology and Environmental Sciences and Israel Nature and Parks Authority (An integrated program for establishing biological baselines and monitoring protocols for marine reserves in the Israeli Mediterranean Sea). Argyro Zenetos and Paraskevi K. Karachle would like to thank the citizenscientists collaborating with the Ellenic Network on Aquatic Invasive Species (ELNAIS – elnais.hcmr.gr). Nikolaos Doumpas, Ioannis Giovos, Periklis Kleirou and Francesco Tiralongo would like to thank all the citizen-scientists that contributed with their shared records and data in the citizen-science project “Is it alien to you? Share it!!!” (https://www.facebook.com/ groups/104915386661854/). Data from Gyaros Island marine reserve were collected under the “GyarosMPA” project, funded by “MAVA Fondation pour la Nature”. Data from Corsica coastline were mainly collected in the framework of the “Corsica Alien Network” initiated by “Office de l’Environnement de la Corse”. Carla Morri and Carlo Nike Bianchi received financial support from FFARB (funds for basic research activities) by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research. Ergün Taşkın has been supported by TÜBİTAK, Ankara, Turkey (Project Number: 114Y238). The Slovenian authors would like to acknowledge their financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding No. P1-0237) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food of the Republic of Slovenia. Mehmet Fatih Huseyinoglu thanks University of Kyrenia’s Scientific Research Project numbered GRN-20191-004. Fabio Crocetta was funded by the COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action TD1209 Alien Challenge project. The FRI (HAO DEMETER) team is very grateful to the Marine Strategy Project for financial support. Records of NIS in Jbel Moussa, the National Park of Al Hoceima and Cap des Trois Fourches sites from Morocco were obtained during surveys conducted within the framework of the MedKeyHabitats and the MedMPAnet Projects implemented by UNEP/MAP-RAC/SPA in close collaboration with the Haut Commissariat aux Eaux et Forêts et à la Lutte Contre la Désertification (HCEFLCD) and financially supported by RAC/SPA, Tunisia and the MAVA Foundation, Switzerland (MedKeyHabitats Project) and the European Commission (EC), the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation to Development (AECID), and the French Global Environment Facility (MedMPAnet Project). Jamila Ben Souissi was partially funded by BiodivMex /Chantier MISTRALS. Konstantinos Tsiamis sampling records were retrieved during his post in the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, which he would like to thank for. Periklis Kleitou and Demetris Kletou were supported by the LIFE financial instrument of the European Union – RELIONMED project [Grant Agreement LIFE16 NAT/ CY/000832]. Some of the data included in the dataset were obtained through the marine citizen science platform Observadores del Mar www.observadoresdelmar.es with the support of FECYT FCT-17-12469, LIFE IP Intemares and Fundació Marilles, and through the citizen science site of the Italian Marine Protected Area of “Regno di Nettuno” (islands of Ischia, Procida and Vivara): www.citizensciencerdn.org. Most data from Lebanon were retrieved from social media dedicated to citizen science (Facebook group: Sea Lebanon https://www.facebook.com/ groups/109615625861815/) or fishers and scuba divers WhatsApp groups). Jamila Rizgalla wishes to thank the administration of Regatta for granting a free pass to conduct field surveys and the security personnel for providing a safe environment. Anna Occhipinti-Ambrogi was supported by European Community’s Seventh Framework Program VECTORS (Vectors of Change in Oceans and Seas Marine Life, Impact on Economic Sectors). The long lasting collaboration with the ICES Working Group on Introductions and Transfer of Marine Organisms (WGITMO) has been a good forum where many information and ideas could be exchanged within some of the authors (Anna Occhipinti-Ambrogi, Argyro Zenetos, Agnese Marchini, and a wider community of scientists working on biological invasions). A. Rosso and R. Sanfilippo received grants from the Catania University Research Plan 2016/2018. Data from Kuriat island were collected under the “Kuriat project”, funded by “MAVA Fondation pour la Nature” executed by SPA/RAC in partnership with the Coastal Protection and Management Agency (APAL) and Notre Grand Bleu (NGB) NGO. The AIS/ERA (Environment and Resources Authority) Maltese data were obtained from the EU funded project EMFF 8.3.1 under the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund 2014–2020 with a total cost of €1.6 million in public eligible EMFF funds (75% EU 25% MT), managed by AIS/ERA (Environment and Resources Authority). The ultimate goals of this European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF 2014–2020) project are to devise a holistic approach towards marine monitoring and develop a comprehensive database of data collected about the Maltese waters., With the funding support of the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S), of the Spanish Research Agency (AEI)

Capital of several empires through centuries, Istanbul has been a populated city in history. However, the population has increased by a factor of 13.3 over the last seven decades, which in turn has made this megacity a hotspot of domestic and industrial pollution. Marine biodiversity around Istanbul suffered from the increased pressures due to overfishing, extensive recreational usage, extreme habitat destruction and introduction of alien species via heavy maritime traffic. 70 years before, Muzaffer Demir published a colossal marine biodiversity study in 1952. We used the organization of this publication, and particularly employed it as a methodology, combined with Underwater Visual Census for a later study between 1997–1999 which involved more than 100 scuba dives. Our study investigated the abundance status of benthic species living mainly on rocky reefs as deep as 50 meters. The investigated species represented four phyla: Cnidaria, Echinodermata, Mollusca and Porifera. Approximately 40% of cnidarians, 40% of echinoderms, 65% of molluscs, and 80% of sponges recorded in the 1950s, were not recorded during our study, particularly due to methodological differences and population collapses or local extinctions. This paper aims to analyze and compare the temporal aspects of marine biodiversity in the Prince’s Islands and Bosphorus region using several time domains; historical records, Demir’s compendium in 1952, our field study in the closing of the previous millennium, combined efforts of the Turkish Journal of Zoology in 2014 of Turkey biodiversity checklists, and the most recent literature after that.

The invasive alien lionfish, Pterois miles is a ray-finned fish from the Scorpaenidae family, which has twelve accepted species from the genus Pterois. It was recorded in May 2014 at the Pina Reef, 2.28 miles off Kas harbour (southwestern coasts of Turkey) for the first time, and showed a very rapid establishment in the rocky habitats throughout Kas-Kekova Special Environmental Protected Area (SEPA). During the summer of 2014 only three individuals were recorded at two different locations, however as of 2017, regular observations could be made at each diving spot, which is indicative of an increasing trend. The temporal perspective of this study increases the understanding on the progression of expected range expansion of P. miles within a relatively small region, covering the period of 2014–2019. Fish count observations from underwater visual census surveys in addition to records from citizen science approach were evaluated based on spatio-temporal analysis. Resulting visualizations were prepared to present annual dynamics of spatio-temporal distribution within and outside the SEPA. Rapid expansion, up to 22 individuals per 500 m linear transects of an estimated area of 15.000 m2 each, and the increases in the numbers of fish are quantified in this study, which can be used as a baseline to develop conservation strategy for native species. Efforts to cull and create consumption demand to decrease the population trend of the lionfish have already started in the region.

The recent invasion of the lionfish Pterois miles to the Mediterranean draws major concerns to the fate of the indigenous ecosystem, based on previous knowledge of the species' detrimental capabilities as an introduced species in the Western Atlantic Ocean. In order to determine invasive patterns in the Eastern Mediterranean, we compared the genetic divergence of two mtDNA markers, the COI and D-loop, between and within the introduced Levantine and native range Red Sea populations of the lionfish. COI region presented a remarkably shallow genealogy, and both genes have failed to show a definite geographic population structure, with non-significant AMOVA and low pairwise FST values. A shared haplotype across all localities in the D-loop provided probable confirmation for the Red Sea origin of the invasive population, and a number of introduced haplotypes indicated that the Mediterranean populations are a product of multiple invasion events. Finally, we observed large haplotype diversity in the Red Sea samples that were absent from the introduced localities, implying a possible future enforcement to the invasive genetic pool in the Mediterranean Sea.