Oceanographic cruise - MEDITS (MEDIterranean Trawl Survey)

The MEDITS campaign is a historic series of fishing campaigns, initiated in 1994 in the French Mediterranean (East-Corsica and Gulf of Lion). The geographical coverage of the programme includes all the trawlable facades of the 12 states contributing to this campaign in the Mediterranean (Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Albania) and since 2009 in the Black Sea (Romania and Bulgaria). The objective of this campaign is to assess demersal stocks (fish, crustaceans and cephalopods) by bottom trawling in the Gulf of Lion and eastern Corsica. Samples of environmental parameters are taken for the DCF (temperature, salinity, depth) and the DCSMM (analysis of gelatinous material, sampling of macro-waste of anthropic origin). The Pocket Ferry Box is also used and allows the continuous acquisition of physico-chemical parameters such as temperature, salinity, pH, turbidity, oxygen, and biological parameters such as the concentration of chlorophyll-a of the phytoplankton spectral classes (via its AOA1 module). The MEDITS fisheries campaign initially launched for stock management purposes has evolved into an ecosystem campaign since 2015 with the collection of environmental parameters for the MSFD. The data from each campaign are used to provide all types of indicators required by fisheries managers, namely for international (direct and indirect stock assessments) and national expertise, as well as for research purposes. The system has also been collecting data on anthropogenic marine litter (indicator 10.1.2 of the MSFD) since the start of the programme (1994).