## 5 Conclusions  
The whole ice-stored meagre caught in January and July presented different shelf-life (15 and 12 days, respectively), microbial population profile, bacterial communities' composition, and VOCs profile, indicating that season of harvesting plays an important role in spoilage status of farmed meagre. _Pseudomonas_ and _Psychrobacter_ were found to be the potential spoilage organisms of the whole meagre of January, while _Pseudomonas_ and _Shewanella_ of fish of July. Regarding the fillets, _Pseudomonas_ might spoil fish from both months. Of the VOCs detected, trimethylamine, 3-methylbutanoic acid and 3-methyl-1-butanol, linked with the metabolic activity of _Pseudomonas_, _Psychrobacter_ and/or _Shewanella_ in the literature, could be used as spoilage markers of meagre since they increased during cold storage. No compounds of chemical oxidation or other chemical reaction were found to increase in the whole or filleted meagre, while some compounds like alkanes with a declining trend, could be potentially used as indicators of freshness loss. The present work deals with the study of the shelf-life of whole and filleted meagre; an ascending fish species from the Hellenic aquaculture with a potential to become a very popular foodstuff, worldwide. The importance of studying the microbiota changesduring the storage period (and more importantly at the end of shelf-life) in combination with the evaluation of VOCs produced by this microbiota, is undeniable, while the use of modernized techniques to unveil the hitherto \"unknown profile\" of such kind of fish, is of great industrial and scientific interest. The present work provides to the stakeholders the \"first picture\" on what is happening during meagre storage, highlighting several differences in both fish handling/processing (whole-filleded) and season of capture (January-July), triggering in parallel the need for further research on these topics. Thus, our findings are the first step in the attempt to help stakeholders to supply meagre products of a high-quality level in national and international commerce. The following are available online at [[https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/foods10123109/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/foods10123109/s1)]([https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/foods10123109/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/foods10123109/s1)), Table S1: Number of reads and alpha diversity indices of evaluated samples. Whole (ArW) and filleded (ArF) chill-stored meagre caught in January (1) and July (2), Table S2: Relative content (%) of volatile compounds in whole meagre during storage on ice. Values represent the mean content (\(\pm\)standard deviation) of the replicates for each sampling month, Table S3: Relative content (%) of volatile compounds in filleded meagre during storage at 4 \({}^{\circ}\)C. Values represent the mean content (\(\pm\)standard deviation) of three replicates for each sampling month, Figure S1: Shannon-Wiener rarefaction curves of whole (ArW) and filleded (ArF) chill-stored meagre caught in January (1) and July (2) at intervals of storage time, obtained through 10 sampling depths, Figure S2: Relative abundance (%) of bacterial phyla (upper) and families (down) of whole (ArW) and filleded (ArF) chill-stored meagre caught in January (1) and July (2), obtained through metabarcoding analysis of 165 rRNA gene at intervals of storage time, Figure S3: Permutation analysis showing the observed and cross-validated R2Y and Q2 coefficients of OPLS-DA model for (A) whole and (B) filleded meagre, Figure S4: Effect of seasonal variation on the volatile compounds of meagre. OPLS-DA score plot of (A) whole meagre caught in January (ArW1) and July (ArW2), (B) filleded meagre caught in January (ArF1) and July (ArF2). The percentage of the explained response variance is indicated in parentheses. The shaded ellipses correspond to the 95% confidence regions of each class. Conceptualization, I.S.B. and F.F.P. ; methodology, F.S., A.M. and A.S.; software, F.S., D.A.A. and A.M.; validation, F.S., D.A.A.