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The general objective of the RADMED-ESMARES project is the multidisciplinary monitoring of the shelf and continental slope waters of the Spanish Mediterranean, including both the peninsular coast and the Balearic Islands. The area to be covered is very wide, so in order to optimize the available means, 17 sections are carried out covering the shelf and slope at strategic points of the coast, as well as others in the area of the channels of the Balearic Islands and the Gulf of Valencia where the transports through these determine to a great extent the regional hydrodynamics and affect the general circulation of the MEDOC. The variables to be monitored are physical, chemical and biological variables, aiming to study the hydrographic conditions, planktonic communities, seasonal cycles of these variables and their interannual variability. This monitoring allows us to implement our data banks, generate time series, establish ocean climatologies, study oscillations, trends, anomalies and their relationship with global warming and climate change

Multidisciplinary time series generated by the monitoring programs supported by the Spanish Institute for Oceanography (IEO, Instituto Español de Oceanografía) in the Spanish Mediterranean Waters are analyzed. These time series extend from 1992 in some cases, whereas in others they started in 2007 when the different monitoring programs funded by IEO were merged in the current project RADMED. These time series are used to describe the average values and ranges of variability of different variables that could be useful for describing the environmental state of the Spanish Mediterranean waters. Such analyses and statistics are provided as tables that could be used as a reference for future research work or for management purposes.Data from the IEO monitoring programs are complemented with meteorological information from the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET, Agencia Estatal de Meteorología), satellite data from the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency) and l’Estartit oceanographic and meteorological station, operated by Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM/CSIC).Besides the description of the current environmental state of the Spanish Mediterranean marine ecosystems, an analysis of long term trends is carried out, assessing the possible changes associated to Climate Change

Scoring animal behavior is increasingly needed for better understanding ecological processes. For example, behavior shapes harvesting likelihood, thus management of harvested resources should improve after accounting for behavior-driven processes. Automatic video-recording at controlled arenas is the most widespread method for scoring behavior. However, long term tracking animals while keeping identity is still an opened challenge. Here, we develop an ad-hoc algorithm for multi-tracking objects during days or even weeks, to fulfill the particular needs for a behavioral assay concerning a fish species targeted by recreational fishing. Specifically, we overcome the challenge of keeping fish identity in a context where they often disappeared from the camera when entering a shelter, the pixel size was low compared to the size of the arena and the lighting was constrained by the wellbeing of the fish. This work may contribute to better assess the behavioral features of fish in long-lasting lab conditions

The RADMED project is devoted to the implementation and maintenance of a multidisciplinary monitoring system around the Spanish Mediterranean waters. This observing system is based on periodic multidisciplinary cruises covering the coastal waters, continental shelf and slope waters and some deep stations (>2000 m) from the Westernmost Alboran Sea to Barcelona in the Catalan Sea, including the Balearic Islands. This project was launched in 2007 unifying and extending some previous monitoring projects which had a more reduced geographical coverage. Some of the time series currently available extend from 1992, while the more recent ones were initiated in 2007. The present work updates the available time series up to 2015 (included) and shows the capability of these time series for two main purposes: the calculation of mean values for the properties of main water masses around the Spanish Mediterranean, and the study of the interannual and decadal variability of such properties. The data set provided by the RADMED project has been merged with historical data from the MEDAR/MEDATLAS data base for the calculation of temperature and salinity trends from 1900 to 2015. The analysis of these time series shows that the intermediate and deep layers of the Western Mediterranean have increased their temperature and salinity with an acceleration of the warming and salting trends from 1943. Trends for the heat absorbed by the water column for the 1943–2015 period, range between 0.2 and 0.6 W/m2 depending on the used methodology. The temperature and salinity trends for the same period and for the intermediate layer are 0.002 °C/yr and 0.001 yr−1 respectively. Deep layers warmed and increased their salinity at a rate of 0.004 °C/yr and 0.001 yr−1

IBAMar is a regional database that puts together all the physical and biochemical data provided by multiparametric probes and water sample analysis taken during the cruises managed by the Balearic Oceanographic Center of the Instituto Español de Oceanografía (COB-IEO) during the last four decades. Initially, it integrated data from hydrographic profiles obtained from CTDs (conductivity, temperature, depth) equipped with several sensors, but it has been recently extended to incorporate data obtained with hydrocasts using oceanographic Niskin or Nansen bottles. The result is an extensive regional resource database that includies physical hydrographic data such as temperature (T), salinity (S), dissolved oxygen (DO), fluorescence, and turbidity, as well as biochemical data, specifically dissolved inorganic nutrients (phosphate, nitrate, nitrite, and silicate) and chlorophyll-a. Different technologies and methodologies were used by independent teams during the four decades of data sampling. However in the IBAMar database, data have been reprocessed using the same protocols and a standard quality control (QC) methodology has been applied to each variable. The result is a homogeneous and quality-controlled data. IBAMar database at standard levels is freely available for exploration and download from http://www.ba.ieo.es/ibamar/.

In the western Mediterranean Sea, the RADMED monitoring programme is already conducting several of the evaluations required under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MFSD) along the Spanish Mediterranean coast. The different aspects of the ecosystem that are regularly sampled under this monitoring programme are the physical environment and the chemical and biological variables of the water column, together with the planktonic communities, biomass and structure. Moreover, determinations of some anthropogenic stressors on the marine environment, such as contaminants and microplastics, are under development. Data are managed and stored at the Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO) Data Centre that works under the Sea- DataNet infrastructure, and are also stored in the IBAMar database. In combination with remote sensing data, they are used to address open questions on the ecosystems in the western Mediterranean Sea.

Oceanographic data obtained between 2001 and 2011 by the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO, Spain) have been used to characterise the spatial distribution and the temporal variability of the dissolvedoxygen around the Balearic Islands (Mediterranean Sea). The study area includes most of the Western Mediterranean Sea, from the Alboran Sea to Cape Creus,atthe border between France and Spain. Dissolved Oxygen (DO) at thewatersurface is found to be in a state of equilibrium exchange with the atmosphere. In the spring and summer a subsurface oxygen supersaturation is observed due to the biological activity, above the subsurface fluorescence maximum. Minimum observed values of dissolved oxygen are related to theLevantine Intermediate Waters (LIW). An unusual minimum of dissolved oxygen concentrations were also recorded in the Alboran Sea Oxygen Minimum Zone. The Western Mediterranean Deep Waters (WMDW) and the Western Intermediate Waters (WIW) show higher values of dissolved oxygenthanthe Levantine Intermediate Waters due to their more recent formation. Using these dissolved oxygen concentrations it is possible to showthat the Western Intermediate Waters move southwards across the Ibiza Channel and the deep water circulates around the Balearic Islands. It has also been possible to characterise the seasonal evolution of the different watermassesandtheir dissolved oxygen content in a station in the Algerian sub-basin. Keywords: Ocean circulation, dissolved oxygen, water masses, Western Mediterranean Sea, Balearic Sea

The Western Intermediate Water (WIW) is probably the less studied water mass in the Western Mediterranean (WMED). It is clearly identifiable as a temperature minimum above the Levantine Intermediate Water (LIW). The WIW circulation from the northern part of the WMED to the south and through the Balearic Channels is well known, but no specific experiments have been devoted to the study of the formation process of this water mass. It is usually accepted, in a vague sense, that WIW is formed in the northern sector of the WMED, in areas surrounding the Gulf of Lions, the Ligurian Sea and the Catalan Sea, being advected towards the Balearic Channels as part of the northern current. The present work shows hydrographic data obtained in late winter in 2010 after severe storms in the WMED. These data show intermediate convective mixing along the whole continental shelf of the Iberian Peninsula, as far to the south as Cape Palos. The data analysed show that, under severe winter conditions, the formation area of WIW is larger than previously thought and the salinity and temperature ranges for this water mass are also wider than those traditionally accepted in the literature. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.

The deep waters in the Western Mediterranean (> 600 m) are the result of mixing between the two water masses above it (Atlantic Water, 0–200 m and Levantine Intermediate Water, 200–600 m) and heat and buoyancy losses in late winter. Deep waters in the Western Mediterranean have undergone a continuous warming during the second half of the twentieth century and initially it was hypothesized that this had been caused by the warming of the contributing water masses, very likely linked to global warming. Nevertheless, no clear signals of warming have been detected in the intermediate layers and no warming trends were detected in the upper layer before the 1980s. This fact suggested that the cause of deep water warming could be linked to river damming and the consequent salinity increase, instead of to an increase of the heat absorbed by the upper ocean, as in other parts of the world ocean. In this work we use the data base MEDATLAS and data from more recent monitoring programs to construct the longest temperature and salinity time series ever analysed in the Western Mediterranean (1900 to 2008). These time series show that both the upper and intermediate layers have warmed throughout the twentieth century. Long term and decadal variability in the upper layer correlate with surface air temperature in the northern hemisphere and heat absorbed by the upper North Atlantic Ocean, suggesting that the time series analysed in this work reflect the present heat absorption of the oceans in the context of global warming. The present data set highlights the importance of monitoring programs and provides a proxy for the study of climate change.

Data bases such as MEDATLAS [1] have proved to be an extremely valuable tool for assessing long term changes. Nevertheless, recent works have shown that the irregular time and spatial distribution of data can decrease the robustness of the analyses [2, 3]. Monitoring programs with systematic samplings are required in order improve the estimations of long term changes, but this arises the question of whether or not data from new monitoring programs and “old” data bases can be merged in order to construct long time series. In this work we check the homogeneity of time series constructed from MEDATLAS data base and the monitoring program RADMED in the Spanish Mediterranean. Time series extending from 1900 to 2008 show the warming and salting of the Western Mediterranean (WMED)