Artificial reefs in the North –East Atlantic area: Present situation, knowledge gaps and future perspectives

Coastal greening of grey infrastructure: an update on the state-of-the-art

“…measurable benefits for humans and nature. The authors suggested that much could be learnt from the artificial reef literature, a more established discipline subject to intense critical evaluation (e.g., Pioch et al, 2011;Castello y Tickell et al, 2019;Komyakova et al, 2021;Reis et al, 2021;Vivier et al, 2021b;Bartholomew et al, 2022;Salaün et al, 2022) can increase fish production, including commercially-important species, by providing refuge, breeding sites and increased feeding opportunities (Pondella et al, 2002;Cresson et al, 2014;Roa-Ureta et al, 2019;Folpp et al, 2020). ARs can provide additional hard-bottom habitat as attachment sites for commercially-important bivalves (Goeltz et al, 2020) and important habitatforming species like macroalgae and corals (Campos et al, 2020, Higgins et al, 2022.…”

Artificial reefs built by 3D printing: Systematisation in the design, material selection and fabrication

“…The fabrication of ARs by 3D printing is not a new topic, there are several initiatives and projects that propose different shape designs [18][19][20][21]. However, information regarding design, materials used and characterisation of the deployment site is still very scarce [22]. Furthermore, systematisation of the monitoring method after deployment together with finding correlations between shapes and/or materials with bio-colonisation performance is still insufficient [22].…”

Assessment of the environmental acceptability of potential artificial reef materials using two ecotoxicity tests: Luminescent bacteria and sea urchin embryogenesis

“…On the other hand, within the context of international conventions for the protection of the marine environment, it is considered that ARs "set of elements, made up of various inert materials and with various shapes, which are distributed over a delimited surface of the seabed in order to protect, regenerate and develop populations of species of fishing interest" (Lima et al, 2019;Reis et al, 2021;Suzdaleva and Beznosov, 2021). In any case, it is necessary to emphasize that any inert material that is to be used for the creation of an artificial reef must be previously evaluated in accordance with the criteria of the "Specific Guidelines for Assessment of Inert, Inorganic Geological Material" developed by the London Convention (London Convention and Protocol/UNEP, 2009).…”