Fishermen, scientists, diving clubs and the public administration collaborate to protect and restore seabeds in the Mediterranean coast
Implanting gorgonian that were accidentally caught by fishnets in the Mediterranean coasts is one of the pilot actions for the ecological marine restoration launched by a team of experts of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona, CSIC and the University of Girona, in collaboration with fishermenʼs associations, diving clubs and the public administration, among other participants.
Implanting gorgonian that were accidentally caught by fishnets in the Mediterranean coasts is one of the pilot actions for the ecological marine restoration launched by a team of experts of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona, CSIC and the University of Girona, in collaboration with fishermenʼs associations, diving clubs and the public administration, among other participants.
Gorgonians are organisms with a great ecological value that brings a great part of its three-dimension structure, biomass and complexity to the marine habitat. A source for food and shelter for marine organisms, they are slow-growth organisms and highly sensitive -like other structural species- to those impacts from human activity (fishing, for instance), climate change and proliferation of filamentous algae, according to the recent report on the monitoring of the marine environment in the Natural Park of Cap de Creus and Natural Park of Montgrí and the Medes Islands and Baix Ter, launched by the Generalitat de Catalunya and developed by the University of Barcelona.
“Marine restoration techniques are still at their beginnings, and we need the involvement of different stakeholders if we want to implement efficient measures”, notes researcher Cristina Linares, from the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences of the University of Barcelona, and member of the scientific team that works on these marine ecological restoration projects.
ResCap: replanting gorgonians in Cap de Creus
Protecting populations of gorgonians in the Cap de Creus continental platform -between 80 and 120 meters deep─ is the focus of the project Conservació i Recuperació de Poblacions de Gorgònies de Profunditat mitjançant Restauració Ecològica i Mitigació dels Impactes de Pesca (Preservation and recovery of gorgonian populations through the ecological restoration and mitigation of fishing impact, ResCap), led by Andrea Gori, researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC).
ResCap is a project of the Pleamar Program of the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for Ecological Transition, co-funded by the Maritime and Fisheries European Fund (FEMO). In this area of the platform -Community Interest Place (LIC) within the European Union Natura 2000 Network─ several innovative methods were applied to replant gorgonians of the genus Eunicella that were accidentally taken. In this initiative -with facilities for the recovery of gorgonians in Port de la Selva and in Cadaqués─ the experts collaborate with the coastal fishing collectives of the associations in Port de la Selva and Cadaqués and the Natural Park of Cap de Creus.
“This is one of the first projects on restoration and mitigation of the effects of fishing carried out jointly with users of this area, in this case the fishermen”, notes Josep Maria Gili, research lecturer at ICM-CSIC. “This is one of the few areas in Spain to reach an agreement between fishermen, scientists and administration to preserve the habitats in the seafloors, where they understood that preserving means improving, not banning”.
MERCES and ShelfReCover: restoring and protecting marine habitats
The applied techniques in the ResCap project derive from the previous scientific studies of the projects ShelfReCover (funded by the BBVA Foundation) and the Marine ecosystem restoration in changing European (MERCES), focused on improving methods and protocols on the restoration of marine habitats. With a fund of six million euros, MERCES is the first Horizon 2020 project that focuses on the ecological restoration of oceanic habitats with a great marine biodiversity (seagrass, rocky seabeds, deep ecosystems, etc.). It is led by the Marche Polytechnic University (Italy), and has twenty-eight partners from sixteen countries, among which are the UB, ICM-CSIC, CEAB-CSIC and UdG.
Within the MERCES project, it is stated that most replanted gorgonians in 2015 in the Cap de Creus continental platform -85 meters deep- are alive and well preserved, according to the observations of the marine robot Girona 500 (UdG). This action to protect gorgonians started with the project ShelfReCover, with teams led by Andrea Gori (ICM-CSIC) and Cristina Linares (UB), with the collaboration of the Computer Vision of Robotics Research Grop (ViCOROB) of the UdG, Ports de la Generalitat de Catalunya, and Club Nàutic Port de la Selva.
MERCES also launched the transplant of 400 red gorgonians (Paramuricea clavata) in the seabeds of the Medes Islands, in a pilot action in 2007, coordinated by Cristina Linares (UB) and Joaquim Garrabou (ICM-CSIC). Other participants in this initiative were the Natural Park of Montgrí, Medes Islands and Baix Ter, and a group of sixteen instructors from diving centers in Estartit.
Reintegrating the red coral colonies (Corallium rubrum) that were caught illegally was the objective of another action launched by the UB and ICM-CSIC in 2011 in the Medes Islands. Restoring the effects of the plundering caused by poaching -through the replantation of living red coral colonies- was a fragile operation and its success depended on many factors. According to the expertsʼ evaluation, conducted within the framework of the MERCES project, with the collaboration of the Natural Park of Montgrí, Medes Islands and Baix Ter, everything suggests that coral populations that were planted show a high rate of survival.