This video, produced by the project POSBEMED, highlights the value of Posidonia oceanica for the Mediterranean. The POSBEMED project in one of the 9 thematic initiatives under the umbrella of the EU Interreg Med PANACeA project on Biodiversity Protection. POSBEMED is led by the Entente Interdépartementale de Démoustication Méditerranée (EID-Med, Montpellier) in France and involves partners from three more Mediterranean countries: the International Union for Conservation of Nature - Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation (IUCN, Malaga, Spain), the International Marine Centre Foundation (IMC, Sardinia, Italy), ECO-logica srl (Bari, Italy) and the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR, Anavissos, Greece). Other associated partners are the Hellenic Society for the Protection of Nature (Greece), Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Environment (Cyprus), Larnaka Municipality (Cyprus), Regional Government of the Balearic Islands (Spain), French Agency for Biodiversity (France), and the Municipality of Giovinazzo (Italy). POSBEMED is an Interreg-Med project co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.

The Marine Protected Area Protection Framework (MaPAF; Rodríguez-Rodríguez et al., 2016) was adapted to update progress on the protection of Pelagos Sanctuary marine biodiversity. Accordingly, protection was conceived as an additive process entailing two complementary factors: 1. Legal protection and 2. Managerial protection. Legal protection was assessed through two indicators: 1.1. Legal designation, contributing to protection coverage targets, and 1.2. Regulation stringency, contributing to strict protection targets. Managerial protection was assessed via two indicators: 2.1. Existence of a management authority for the site, and 2.2. Existence of a management plan that is fully implemented (this layer). Both indicators are expected to contribute to effective Marine Protected Areas & Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs) management targets. Thus, a site can be legally protected (typically, an MPA), by management measures (e.g. an OECM), attaining different degrees of conservation to their biodiversity. Therefore, a site that has been endowed a stringent legal designation category which has an appointed managerial authority that fully implements the site’s management plan is assumed to have greater protection than a site with opposite characteristics.

Data represents the number of moorings in marina ports per kilometre of coastline for each NUTS3 or equivalent (e.g. province) region. The total number of moorings was obtained from the data compiled by ETC-UMA on the location and capacity of the marinas, assigning each port its corresponding NUTS3 code and counting the total number of moorings. This value was divided by the length of the region's coastline in km. Results show low to high intensive capacity for this activity by region.

Medbiolitter database summarises results of scientific studies on biodiversity and marine litter interactions in the Mediterranean Sea. To this end, information is collected from different data sources, such as institutions or projects, as well as peer-reviewed publications. One of the main sources of data is LITTERBASE/AWI, only including the coverage within the Mediterranean Sea. The database currently comprises 1047 records on interactions. Interaction refers to encounters between wildlife and litter items and are classified in four categories: 1) Ingestion, which is the most frequently observed interaction, followed by 2) entanglement, which affects motility, often with fatal consequences, 3) colonization, which occurs when many species settle on floating litter, and 4) others, including different types of less frequent interaction. The database includes among others the location, the type of interaction and litter, marine realm (beach, sea surface, water column, seafloor), habitat, species, whether it occurs in a marine protected area and the type in such case, as well as references to the publication from which the data are extracted.

Data representing the percentage change in number of cruise passengers in Mediterranean ports between years 2019 and 2022, including both those who start/end a cruise and those who are on excursion.

Data shows the percentage of built up area in the first 1km of the coastal strip of the Mediterranean region by NUTS3 or equivalent region in 2019. Values were calculated by a 100m pixel count for the "Built-up" class of the Copernicus Global Land Cover. Coast belt is shown with a distance of 25km for mapping reasons.

Data showing the distibution of tourism hotspots based on the location of accomodation and attractions sites available in OpenStreetMap counted per km2. Areas without data cannot be interpreted as an absence of tourism activities, but as unmapped areas.

Data showing the percentage of change in the number bed-places in Mediterranean countries between years 2019 and 2022. Data are mostly available by coastal NUTS2 regions. Data for non European Union countries are available at country level, but only coastal regions are shown on the map to highlight them. Last year reported for most non-EU countries and certain regions of France and Turkey is 2021 (2015 for Egypt).

The Marine Protected Area Protection Framework (MaPAF; Rodríguez-Rodríguez et al., 2016) was adapted to update progress on the protection of Pelagos Sanctuary marine biodiversity. Accordingly, protection was conceived as an additive process entailing two complementary factors: 1. Legal protection and 2. Managerial protection. Legal protection was assessed through two indicators: 1.1. Legal designation, contributing to protection coverage targets, and 1.2. Regulation stringency (this specific layer), contributing to strict protection targets. Managerial protection was assessed via two indicators: 2.1. Existence of a management authority for the site, and 2.2. Existence of a management plan that is fully implemented. Both indicators are expected to contribute to effective Marine Protected Areas & Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs) management targets. Thus, a site can be legally protected (typically, an MPA), by management measures (e.g. an OECM), attaining different degrees of conservation to their biodiversity. Therefore, a site that has been endowed a stringent legal designation category which has an appointed managerial authority that fully implements the site’s management plan is assumed to have greater protection than a site with opposite characteristics.

Medbiolitter database summarises results of scientific studies on biodiversity and marine litter interactions in the Mediterranean Sea. To this end, information is collected from different data sources, such as institutions or projects, as well as peer-reviewed publications. The main source of data currently is LITTERBASE/AWI, including only the coverage within the Mediterranean. The database currently comprises 864 records on interactions. Interaction refers to encounters between wildlife and litter items and are classified in four categories: 1) Ingestion, which is the most frequently observed interaction, followed by 2) entanglement, which affects motility, often with fatal consequences, 3) colonization, which occurs when many species settle on floating litter, and 4) others, including different types of less frequent interaction. The database includes among others the location, the type of interaction and litter, marine realm (beach, sea surface, water column, seafloor), habitat, species, whether it occurs in a marine protected area and the type in such case, as well as references to the publication from which the data are extracted.