Cephalopods, a gap in the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive and their future integration

Abstract

With the aim of maintaining or obtaining good environmental status in the Northeast Atlantic and northern Mediterranean Sea, the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (EU-MSFD) came into force in 2008. All EU Member States (MS) have the task of assessing the current state of their adjacent waters to guarantee sustainable use of marine resources and healthy ecosystems for the current and future generations. Although the MSFD has been implemented for over a decade, there are still gaps in the assessment of various ecologically and commercially important marine species, such as cephalopods. Here we describe the status of cephalopods, a key component of marine ecosystems and a valuable fishing resource, within the MSFD. To do so, we review how MS deal with this group in their reporting and identify and explain the gaps in the cephalopod assessment. We describe the main challenges including the limited data and the rarity of dedicated surveys on cephalopods. However, we argue that cephalopods can be partially integrated into the EU-MSFD assessment, illustrating the current opportunities and future possibilities of their integration into the MSFD, mainly using Descriptors 1-4.