Fitting ecological principles of artificial reefs into the ocean planning puzzle

Abstract

Humans use the coastal ocean and its resources as a source of food and energy, as well as for a variety of other purposes, including transportation and recreation. Over the past several decades, uses of the coastal ocean have been increasingly accompanied by the installation of artificial structures. These artificial structures come in different shapes and sizes, ranging from energy and aquaculture infrastructure that incidentally form habitat for marine organisms to artificial reefs that are often deployed intentionally to become habitat.Marine spatial planning has offered a robust framework for siting artificial structures to minimize conflicts with other uses and maximize societal and economic benefits with other intended uses of the seascape, but ecological criteria are seldom considered in the planning process. In contrast, artificial reefs are intentionally sunk to form structured habitat and provide a variety of ecological functions, yet ecological principles are not often incorporated into the siting and planning process. Instead, artificial reefs are sited largely to advance societal and economic benefits and minimize conflicts with other uses, such as shipping traffic, military use, or impacts to sensitive areas. We outline a framework to further incorporate ecological principles into artificial reef siting, design and construction, and evaluation that features place-based and adaptive management coupled with tenets from experimental field ecology. This framework accounts for complexities of and interactions among ecological, societal, and economic criteria associated with artificial reefs to ensure they meet defined goals.

Quantifying spatial extents of artificial versus natural reefs in the seascape

“…The same pattern of heightened natural reef coverage applied across depth bins. Artificial reefs had greater proportional coverage in shallower depths, likely reflecting artificial reef deployment goals, which often include providing fishing and diving sites that are easily accessible by stakeholders and thus close to shore in shallower depths (Becker et al, 2018;Paxton et al, 2022). Natural reefs, however, are more widespread across depth gradients and are susceptible to burial and exposure with sediment movement, reflecting the underlying geology of the SEUS region (Parker et al, 1983;Riggs et al, 1996;Renaud et al, 1997;Riggs et al, 1998).…”

No effect of nearby natural reef existence on fish assemblages at shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea

“…While Fabi et al (2002Fabi et al ( , 2004 and Gül et al (2011) found lower H ′ values, Relini et al (2002), Özgül et al (2016) and Acarlı et al (2020) reported similar H ′ values with the present study. Animals across a variety of taxa and levels of the marine food web occur around artificial reefs, ranging from invertebrates to fishes and marine mammals (Paxton et al, 2022). Moreover, high-relief artificial structures have a positive effect on fish diversity by providing additional structures usable by pelagic species (Rilov & Benayahu, 2000;Plumlee et al, 2020).…”

Introduction: Honoring the contribution of Charles H. Peterson (1946–2020) to the field of marine ecology

“…Grabowski et al (2022) and Powers and Grabowski (2023) revisit and extend our understanding of the role that habitat structure, location, and hydrodynamics play in successful oyster restoration efforts. Paxton et al (2022) provide a framework for better incorporating ecological principles, adaptive management, and experiments in the siting, design, construction, and evaluation of artificial reefs in the coastal ocean. To wrap up the Special Feature , Smith et al (2022) and Lenihan et al (2022) report on the ecological impacts of fishing and the use of marine reserves and collaborative fishery research in recovering, restoring, and managing coastal marine fisheries.…”