TheVoiceOfJoyce

www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/25/reefs-made-from-trees-could-help-restore-biodiversity-study-finds

it’s working. Six months after seeding the sea bed with these pear tree pyramids, marine life is returning to the areas. The entire EU is now considering different tree species, per region, to reclaim marine biodiversity along all coastal areas.

#DOING SOMETHING IS BETTER THEN DOING NOTHING.

Jon Dickson, a PhD candidate at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, said: “We have fossil records of sunken wood communities dating back to the Jurassic period … we are trying to simulate what it used to be like. [Because] trees are cheap and waste products, it’s cheaper to scale than using concrete or sunken ships.”

Dickson and colleagues found that after six months the tree reefs were home to algae and more than 15 sessile organisms – species that are immobile and typically anchored to a surface, like barnacles on the hull of a ship.

They also found that the sites with tree reefs were home to three times more species of fish than control areas without.

These findings suggest that certain marine habitats could be recovered through the use of these tree reefs.

“Hopefully we can push the knowledge that we’ve learned into other similar systems, [such as] in the North Sea … and help the fish population recover there,” Dickson said.

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