Event Abstract Back to Event Doing things better: marine legislation and recovery of ecosystems Angel Borja1* 1 Centro tecnológico experto en innovación marina y alimentaria (AZTI), Marine Research Division, Spain In recent years seas are facing really important challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, increasing pressures, etc., and media are highlighting some problems which certainly require urgent solutions (plastics and microplastics, emerging pollutants, etc.). However, are they the most harmful problems at sea? We know that one of the most important and pervasive problems that our seas are facing is overfishing, which extends the impacts to many ecosystem components (foodwebs, benthic communities, fish, seabirds, mammals, etc.). Despite this, in the last decades new legislation in Europe (Water Framework Directive, Marine Strategy Framework Directive), as well as new policies (Common Fisheries Policy, Biodiversity Strategy, etc.) seem that have provided the necessary management resources to revert the situation, at some extent. Hence, trends in different seas and for different physico-chemical and biological elements are improving and the global status of European seas, although still requiring management actions, has started to be close of the good status. Here, I will present some examples of improvement of the environmental status in Europe, as well as the evaluation at the different European seas, using the Nested Environmental status Assessment Tool (NEAT). Also, I will highlight how the recovery of marine systems is able to provide new and more ecosystem services for human wellbeing. Keywords: MSFD, assessment, recovery of ecosystems, Monitoring, Europe Conference: XX Iberian Symposium on Marine Biology Studies (SIEBM XX) , Braga, Portugal, 9 Sep - 12 Sep, 2019. Presentation Type: Keynote talk Topic: Keynote lecture Citation: Borja A (2019). Doing things better: marine legislation and recovery of ecosystems. Front. Mar. Sci. Conference Abstract: XX Iberian Symposium on Marine Biology Studies (SIEBM XX) . doi: 10.3389/conf.fmars.2019.08.00001 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 02 Aug 2019; Published Online: 27 Sep 2019. * Correspondence: Dr. Angel Borja, Centro tecnológico experto en innovación marina y alimentaria (AZTI), Marine Research Division, Pasaia, 20110, Spain, aborja@azti.es Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Angel Borja Google Angel Borja Google Scholar Angel Borja PubMed Angel Borja Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.