Dr Jordi Boada1, Dr Teresa Alcoverro2, Dr Nur Arafeh-Dalmau3, Dr Enric Ballesteros2, Ms Anaïs Barrera1, Dr Scott Bennett4, Mr Alejandro Bernal-Ibáñez5, Dr Fabio Bulleri6, Dr Pol Capdevila7, Mr David Casals Blanch7, Dr Emma Cebrian2, Dr Giulia Ceccherelli8, Dr Camila W Fagerli9, Dr Simone Farina10, Dr Karen Filbee-Dexter11, Mr Fernando García-González1, Dr Bernat Hereu7, Dr José Carlos Hernandez12, Dr Cayne Layton4, Dr Scott D Ling4, Dr Luisa Mangialajo13, Dr Candela Marco2, Dr Alejandra Mora-Soto14, Dr Albert Pessarrodona11, Dr Jorge Santamaría2, Dr Julia Santana4, Dr Laura Tamburello10, Dr John Turnbull15, Dr Jana Verdura13, Dr Adriana Vergés15, Dr Thomas Wernberg11
1Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche, Sorbonne Université, Villefranche sur Mer, France, 2Centre D’Estudis Avancats De Blanes (CEAB-CSIC), Blanes, Spain, 3Department of Geography, University of California , Los Angeles, USA, 4Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia, 5Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, Funcal, Portugal, 6Department of Biology, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy, 7Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals, Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBIO) Faultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, 8Dipartimento di Scienze della Natura e del Territorio, Università di Sassari, Sassari, Italy, 9Norwegian Institute for Water Research, , Oslo, Norway, 10Department of Integrative Marine Ecology, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples, Italy, 11University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, 12Departamento de Biología Animal, Edafología y Geología. Universidad de la Laguna, La Laguna, Spain, 13Faculty of Sciences, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, Nice, France, 14Biogeosciences Group, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, 15University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Marine forests are under global threat and their collapse can give way to vast hidden deserts now expanding across the oceans. Multiple global (e.g. warming, range-extending species and overfishing) and regional stressors (e.g. pollution) threaten foundation seaweed species in the world’s temperate reefs, profoundly transforming these seascapes to less productive bare rock or turf habitats. As underwater forests disappear all the goods and services associated to the presence of underwater forests that are critical for human well-being are lost. Understanding factors leading to barren formation, how they may expand or contract and how stable they are once created, is vital to prevent future collapses of the macroalgal forests and to develop successful techniques to protect and restore them. The easiness of identifying barrens contrasts with the complexity and limitation of logistics and people to reach every corner of the globe. Citizen science provides an extraordinary opportunity to discover the underwater deserts over large spatial areas. The Hidden Deserts project calls to action to everyone involved in marine activities (e.g. divers, fishers, open-water swimmers) to become sea watchers and help uncovering barrens worldwide. To date, we have logged ~140 underwater deserts of different types and characteristics. We also train and involve dive clubs and other societies to monitor the deserts already discovered following a thorough protocol for monitoring. The information gathered with this project is centralised by the sea watcher’s platform (www.observadoresdelmar.es) and will contribute to reduce the number of barrens and to the conservation of underwater forests.
Biography:
Jordi Boada is a MSCA postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefrance (LOV), France. His research focuses on understanding resilience of marine communities. Within the framework of his Marie Curie project (SHIFT2SOLVE), Jordi aims forecasting the resilience of marine macrophytes as a tipping element to future environmental conditions by studying species acclimatization capacity. Jordi coordinates the Hidden Deserts project which aims uncovering and track the places in which marine forest disappear worldwide.
