After only a few months, these reefs are already teeming with life. Algae, barnacles, mussels, bryozoans, ascidians, and anemones are covering the wood, and the amount of fish around the reefs is five times higher than on the adjacent sand.

Over the last century, natural reefs in the Wadden Sea and North Sea have vanished. These reefs are crucial for fish as they provide hiding and breeding spots. There is a pressing need to restore these reefs. How can we accomplish this? NIOZ has embarked on a research project to assess the ecological significance of TreeReefs, which are experimental reefs created by submerging trees underwater.

Why TreeReefs?

Placing trees at sea sounds a bit strange? And even if it’s feasible, why would you want to do it? To grasp the rationale behind this, let’s consider tropical reefs, as explained by Tjeerd Bouma, a researcher at NIOZ, a professor at Utrecht University, and a lecturer at HZ University of Applied Sciences in Vlissingen. Reefs often support a vibrant community of fish. A similar phenomenon occurs around shipwrecks in the North Sea. This illustrates the vital importance of providing fish with effective hiding places, shielding them from predators, according to Bouma.

But how does one go about restoring these reefs? Bouma drew inspiration from his cycling tours in Zuid-Beveland, an area teeming with orchards, leading to the concept of repurposing low-trunk fruit trees as TreeReefs. In the Netherlands, there are approximately 100,000 hectares of orchards. Each year, roughly 250 hectares are cleared for replanting. These discarded fruit trees represent a natural by-product, possessing their own intricate reef-like structures. Six pear trees together can form a pyramid-shaped reef measuring 3 by 3 meters.

In the past, before the era of dams and dikes, the Wadden Sea used to witness a more significant influx of washed-up trees. Hence, the idea doesn’t seem quite so unconventional after all.

A total of 192 pear trees were placed on the seabed of the Wadden Sea with concrete blocks at their base, resulting in 32 artificial reefs. The pear reefs are monitored with the help of cameras and during survey expeditions. They have now become breeding grounds for fish and shrimp. Ascidians and anemones have become ‘permanent residents’. The researchers hope that a natural reef will remain when the pear reefs have disappeared.

Restoration success

The initiative to restore reefs using pear trees appears to be a significant success. After sixteen months, substantial numbers of butterfish and literally thousands of cuttlefish eggs can be seen in the pear reef, according to Jon Dickson, a doctoral researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ).

This is hopeful news for the Wadden Sea. The established pear reefs help to restore a thriving marine ecosystem. Woodworms are already breaking down the wood, but it is expected that the reefs will persist for several more years. Ultimately, they will naturally disappear.

The swift positive outcome is inspiring because five years ago, alarm bells were already ringing about the state of the Wadden Sea. The project demonstrates that we can actively assist in restoring marine biodiversity. Not only the Wadden Sea can benefit from such innovative measures, but also the North Sea and even oceans, because natural structures like oyster reefs have disappeared on a large scale there as well.

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The Kelp Forest Alliance is an open-access global database that tracks kelp forest restoration projects all around the world and allows anyone to learn from hundreds of projects spanning decades of practice. Members can also post their own restoration initiatives, share their achievements and failures, and contribute to a better understanding of kelp restoration around the world.

Aaron Eger of UNSW, who is the Program Director for the Kelp Forest Alliance and the database’s developer, said that the database “means that we can fast expedite kelp restoration initiatives around the world, by sharing not just what works but also what doesn’t.”

Behind every restoration project is a person, community, or organization dedicated to rebuilding a healthy kelp forest and improving their marine backyard. The Kelp Forest Alliance Community hub brings these groups together and creates an open collaborative community for people ask questions, share ideas, and build new connections to help advance kelp forests.

“Talking to people, we found that they would be exceptionally passionate about their local kelp forest but they weren’t sure how to seek expert advice or connect with people from different backgrounds” says Mr. Eger. The Kelp Forest Alliance community platform breaks down those barriers and connects anyone interested in kelp forests, from conservationists to businesses to governments to artists, all are welcome.

The work does not stop here, kelp forests are continually threatened across our world’s seas. To that end, the Kelp Forest Alliance is convening a meeting of global restoration experts at the International Seaweed Symposium in Hobart, Australia in February 2023. Here they will set an ambitious goal for kelp restoration and to map the best ways to accelerate learning so that we can truly advance the mission of restoring our globally important underwater forests.

Source: Aaron Eger, kelpforestalliance.com

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Scientists now understand that without biodiversity ecosystems lose their resilience and potential to remove carbon from the atmosphere at the rates required to keep inside the 1.5 °C warming limit, both in the ocean and on land. Whales are crucial allies in the battle against climate change.

It is critical that a market-ready whale credit system and the required policy be developed in order to encourage global whale monitoring and conservation. Data on whales and the ocean, scientific investigation, monitoring technology, and cooperation among ocean stakeholders are all necessary for determining the value of whale ecosystem services and developing a market solution.

The distinctive contribution of Whale Seeker is to develop ethical AI and visual remote sensing technologies that can monitor whale presence and prevent harm from companies that share the whales’ ocean environment. With the help of this technology, business operational procedures and standards will be more accountable and verifiable.

Whale Seeker™ is leading this project in the Canadian Arctic, to develop and test a scalable whale carbon and biodiversity detection methodology and credit system to incentivize all marine actors to monitor marine mammal presence and take meaningful action to avoid conflict with them. By basing our methodology on images, we are both providing an auditable quantitative measure of marine mammals and firm metrics to aid in ESG reporting. The pilot project will focus on narwhals (Monodon monoceros), using existing scientific data collected over 10 years to model and verify whale services, while also bringing in new and existing aerial imagery and satellite technology to measure whale abundance in relation to ocean productivity and health. With these advances in science and technology, along with other test cases around the globe to address other whale threats such as entanglements, we aim to deliver verified carbon/biodiversity credits to marine industries in the next two years.

“Our current economic paradigm values dead whales that are sold for their meat. In contrast, living whales are valued at zero dollars although their ecological services, including carbon sequestration, are incredibly valuable to our own survival and well-being as well as to the health of our ocean. We need a new economic paradigm that recognizes and values the services of a living and thriving nature, both flora and fauna. This new nature-positive economy will lead to sustainable and shared prosperity for all” … says Ralph Chami, Assistant Director at the IMF.

“Increasing the world’s whale populations is a win-win strategy to capture more carbon from the atmosphere and improve ocean health. However, for whale protection measures to be adopted on a global scale, we need to incentivize businesses and other stakeholders by proving the benefits of protecting whales far exceed the cost. By using ethical AI we aim to set not only a high technical standard for whale detection but also an ethical one.”, adds Emily Charry-Tissier, CEO and Co-Founder of Whale Seeker.

“For centuries people have used the latest technologies to hunt down and kill whales,” says Ed Goodall, from project board member WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation. “It is a measure of just how far we have come from those dark days that we are now using the latest technology to hunt down and save them. Whales play an outsized role in the marine ecosystem and carbon capture, but these ‘services’ have not fully recognised or valued before. We are now in a race against time to build the evidence base, and secure the finance needed to help whale populations recover, and we are delighted to be working with Whale Seeker on this exciting, cutting-edge project.”

This project will develop scalable, replicable methodology and market solutions for marine mammal health and ocean protection on a worldwide scale. The status of the whale populations around the world is a powerful tool for reducing climate change and a clear sign of the health of the oceans.

Source

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