Miss Brigette Wright1,2,3, Valeriya Komyakova1,2, Stewart Frusher1,2, Ali Shakourloo4, Saeed Mohajernasab3, Nagi Abdussamie3,4, Marcus Haward1,2,4
1Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia, 2Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia, 3Australian Maritime College, University of Tasmania, Launceston, Australia, 4Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre, Launceston, Australia
With close to half of the world’s population residing in coastal areas, reliance on marine environments for food, trade, tourism, recreation, transport and communication activities are likely to continue to increase. These activities have contributed to extensive negative impacts, such as substantial habitat loss and degradation, collapses of many fish stocks, overall decline in biomass, diversity, and local extinctions. Artificial reefs (ARs) have been deployed all around the world as a mitigation tool of some of these impacts (e.g., habitat restoration), as well as a management tool for recreational fisheries. However, with the expansion of artificial infrastructure and coastal hardening, there is a push to move industry offshore, away from vital and fragile coastal ecosystems. This push leads to the need to examine whether offshore floating marine infrastructure can be employed to create artificial reefs that serve as farms and marine habitats. Here, we explore some of the state-of-the-art knowledge in this area and some of the challenges that these ventures may need to consider and address.
Biography:
Biographies to come
