An underwater garden planted by tourists
Gardening of sponges, seagrasses, seaweeds and corals will be made by professionals but especially by tourists.
Sergio Rossi, OCEAN CITIZEN project coordinator
Europe faces alarming degradation to its marine ecosystems, threatening biodiversity and the livelihoods that depend on it. There is particular concern for vulnerable ecosystems dominated by marine forests, such as sponge grounds, seagrasses, corals and gorgonian gardens. Active restoration reconstructs habitats using methods in which scientists actively plant organisms following ecosystem-based solutions. The technique aims to enable connectivity between marine protected and healthy areas, further bolstering natural restoration and coastal resilience to climate change. In the EU-funded OCEAN CITIZEN project, researchers and private companies are developing a new approach, using active restoration to recover neglected marine biomes – focusing on marine forests. The project will create underwater artificial reefs to boost biodiversity, combining citizen science with the latest ecological research. OCEAN CITIZEN will first conduct an in-depth study of the potentially regenerated areas, before adapting the artificial reef material, morphology and distribution to enhance the effects on biodiversity and carbon sequestration. The team will then create an economic model to make underwater gardening self-sustainable, through tourism and biodiversity credits for marine forests. “Gardening of sponges, seagrasses, seaweeds and corals will be made by professionals, but especially by tourists,” explains Sergio Rossi, a marine research scientist at the University of Salento and OCEAN CITIZEN project coordinator. “They will act as true gardeners, as we understand them on land: they will plant, observe changes and take care of the actively planted organisms,” he says. The project will be carried out in a series of ‘clusters’ which will trial different restoration techniques in the Arctic, Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic seas. OCEAN CITIZEN aims to move beyond the notion of ecosystem restoration to regeneration: this includes improving habitat connectivity and functionality by considering the interdependent links between, for example, seaweeds, seagrasses and marine animal forests in natural habitats. “We are also making proofs in the ocean twilight zone and continental shelf areas to understand the overall success of this habitat restoration and functional regeneration,” adds Rossi. “The model will be exported to other areas, to enable the upscaling of this initiative.”
Keywords
blue carbon, ocean-climate-biodiversity nexus, climate mitigation and adaptation, natural carbon sequestration, ecosystem services, marine biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, functional ecology, maritime spatial planning, ecosystem-based approach