Various biological resources and ecosystem services are provided by coastal embayments. These have been impacted by growing human populations, overexploitation, habitat transformation and pollution associated with urban developments and agricultural practices. These pressures may be further exacerbated by climate change driven events. The monitoring of such pressures is enforced via several statutory instruments in the context of, for instance, water quality, waste discharge management or aquaculture practises. There is a multidimensional connectivity element to managing coastal environments, which needs to integrate the transport of water masses along the continental shelf (eg. coastal density driven jets, meteorological physical forcing) and a land-to-sea differential gradient of environmental pressures, including invasive species, harmful algal blooms, microbial and viral contamination in terms of biological risk, or fertilisers, pesticides, microplastics or pharmaceutical and personal care products in terms of chemical pollutants. Sustainable management is key to safeguarding the exploitation of various marine biological resources and increasing the ecological status of the coastal environment. Delivering on this requires the conduct of diversity and stock assessments as well as the implementation of conservation measures or mitigation strategies.
