Report of the Working Group on Marine Habitat Mapping (WGMHM)

The Working Group on Marine Habitat Mapping convened from 3–7 May in Calvi, Corsica and was hosted by Ifremer. The meeting was chaired by Jacques Populus and was attended by 17 delegates from eight countries. Keypoints from the meeting Marine habitat mapping progresses at a good pace within the ICES region of Europe with a number of international programs to support it. The main two drivers are the extension of Natura 2000 to larger marine areas and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), the latter calling for seabed mapping in the development of two of its indicators of good environment status. Of notable importance is the advent of the Interreg IVa Charm 3 project in the Channel, the Interreg IVb Mesh-Atlantic project under “Atlantic Area” (the latter planning to extend former Mesh’s results to south-western Europe) and also the various DG/MARE Emodnet preparatory actions which urge many European marine mapping actors to get together and produce maps and datasets of our seas (among them the broad scale habitat map underway in the EuSeaMap project).