Seabed Integrity in the Baltic Sea

From dredging and trawling to construction, shipping and extraction, many human activities cause physical disturbance to benthic habitats in the Baltic Sea.

By altering geological, physical, and chemical conditions, these anthropogenic pressures negatively affect seabed's integrity, undermining the ability of eabed habitats to provide valuable ecosystem services.

Although seafloor integrity has received considerable attention in research and policy, a lot of knowledge is still missing about the actual locations and extent of benthic habitat types, their recovery potential, impacts of bottom trawling, and cumulative effects of all other pressures.

Our team of experts from the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) and the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM) is working to address these knowledge gaps and governance barriers with a view to developing new mitigation strategies for seafloor integrity so that the Baltic Sea can become healthy and resilient once again.