Effective monitoring of populations and communities is a prerequisite for ecosystem-based management of marine areas. However, monitoring programs often neglect important sources of error and thus can lead to biased estimations, spurious conclusions, and false management actions. One such source of error is imperfect detectability, i.e. inability of investigators to detect all individuals or all species in a surveyed area. Although there has been great effort to develop monitoring methods that account for imperfect detectability, the application of such methods in the marine environment is not as apparent. Plot sampling is by far the most commonly applied method for biological monitoring in the marine environment, yet it largely ignores detectability issues. However, distance sampling, mark-recapture methods, repeated presence/absence surveys for occupancy estimation, and removal methods, are approaches developed that do estimate detection probabilities and provide unbiased estimations of state variables. Herein, these methods and the relevant tools for their application in studies on marine populations and communities are critically reviewed, aiming to assist marine biologists and managers to understand the limitations and pitfalls associated with some approaches and to select the best available methods for their monitoring needs.JRC.H.1-Water Resource

This paper presents the results of an application of ultrasonic telemetry on white seabream, Diplodus sargus inhabiting an artificial reef (AR) in NW Sicily (western Mediterranean Sea). The objective of the study was to investigate the movement pattern of seabreams, verify their homing behaviour and site fidelity, determine their home range and describe their use of the habitat. Four seabreams were tagged and released, and their movements were recorded with automated and manual acoustic receivers. The spatial and temporal distribution of positional data suggest that the tagged seabreams hide inside the AR during the day, staying out of their shelter at night. The nocturnal movements of the tagged fishes are suggested to be a search for food in the seagrass patches surrounding the ARs. The monitored seabreams showed clear homing behaviour and strong site fidelity. Their home range extended from 0.01 to 0.17 km and included the AR and the surrounding sandy area with seagrass patches. Home range areas increased proportionally to the distance between the refuge on AR and the foraging areas on seagrass patches. The higher activity of seabreams during the night was interpreted as a result of a trade-off between predation risk and foraging needs.

This paper reports the weight‐length relationship (WLR) for thirty‐eight fish species from the Gulf of Castellammare (NW Sicily, Mediterranean Sea). A total of 59 870 fish were collected and measured during four seasonal trawl surveys carried out in 2005 at 10 to 200 m depth. The b parameter of the WLRs ranged from 1.79 (Cepola macrophthalma) to 3.56 (Conger conger). Significant differences in both a and b values among seasons were detected for eight species. Moreover, the condition factors (as weight‐at‐length) of Merluccius merluccius and Mullus barbatus were compared in different area/year combinations characterized by the presence or absence of trawling impact. While M. barbatus showed a higher condition factor in trawled areas/years, possibly due to density‐dependent factors linked to the increased biomass in the no‐trawl area, no such link was detected in M. merluccius.