Riaan Cedras

Zooplankton play a key role in marine food webs and carbon cycling and are useful indicators of climaterelated changes and ocean health in pelagic ecosystems. Zooplankton are traditionally identified to species through microscopy, but new molecular techniques have enabled the identification of individual specimens (DNA barcoding) or multiple species in the same sample (DNA metabarcoding). Metabarcoding has been tested and refined using zooplankton collected in South African waters for the first time. Challenges to the implementation of DNA-based methods to measure zooplankton biodiversity easily and routinely include an incomplete DNA barcode reference library, logistical complexity and uptake of the new technology by environmental management agencies. These challenges call for a national effort to intensify zooplankton barcoding initiatives and to effectively engage stakeholders in developing a roadmap towards application of DNA-based methods in marine environmental management. Significance: Metabarcoding has been successfully applied to marine zooplankton for the first time in South Africa, demonstrating its potential as a tool to generate ecosystem indicators during routine ocean observations. National barcoding efforts must be intensified to provide a comprehensive reference library of zooplankton DNA. Effective engagement with stakeholders is required to overcome logistical and policy challenges, and to provide a roadmap towards application of DNA-based methods in marine environmental management.

Western Indian Ocean Early-Career Scientists undertake an investigation on data gathering to advance scientific knowledge in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) based on an interactive web domain designed to provide regional access to research data and the direction of where ocean science is going in the foreseeable future. An online interactive map would guide researchers and identify the research gap to improve better ocean knowledge understanding and create innovative and novel research areas. Fenoy-X aims to foster and strengthen research collaborations and scientific outputs in the region, raising awareness on ocean well-being and the health and protection of ocean resources. This platform will provide contributions to researchers' profiles and allow access to data on studies conducted in the region to encourage best practices of data sharing. Fenoy-X scientific observations in data gathering will develop much-needed niche capacity-building research areas and observed ocean scientists, engaging citizens with open-source data domains and addressing challenges of data sharing in the WIO through this pilot project from 2021‐2030.

In the Western Indian Ocean (WIO), more than 76 records from peer-reviewed and grey literature identified approximately 60 invertebrate taxa harvested for bait and food. The most diverse phyla were Mollusca, followed by Arthropoda and Annelida, with few records of Porifera, Nemertea and Echinodermata. Importance of each phylum differs according to country, with arthropods (Upogebia africana and Kraussillichirus kraussi), and annelids (Marphysa mossambica) being most important in South Africa and Kenya, respectively. Of the taxa utilised, only 42 are reliably identified to species level, suggesting that the diversity of species utilised in the region is greatly underestimated. Most of the data on biology and exploitation were for species from South Africa. Less data were available from Kenya with minimal to none being available from the remaining WIO countries. This limits the understanding of biology and trends in exploitation of most bait taxa, and consequently information required for developing national and regional management policies. Bait management guidelines are available only for South Africa, but require updating in view of changes in use of bait resources. We recommend the development of coordinated multidisciplinary, multicountry research aimed at increasing data and information to feed into policy development and support national and regional bait resource management.

Metabarcoding is an emerging method in which DNA barcoding is combined with next-generation sequencing to determine the biodiversity of taxonomically complex samples. We assessed the current state ...