Artificial structures can be better for living things than natural structures. “A recent study found that corals growing on artificial breakwaters recovered from bleaching faster than those living in natural reefs. The authors hypothesize that this is because the human-made structures provide a stable surface for coral larvae to settle on, while natural reefs, once bleached, can become fragile and break apart,” reports The Doomslayer.
Mongabay explains:
To better understand how to help corals become more resilient, researchers in Japan studied how quickly corals return to artificial structures compared to natural reefs after bleaching.
Previous studies have explored the same question, typically over one to 10 years. The Japanese study used 29 years of field data.
Using government data, the researchers compared coral cover on vertical breakwaters — grooved structures built to protect the shore from waves — with coral recovery on natural reefs in Naha Port, Japan, from 1989 to 2018.
A bleaching event in 1998 affected both types of substrates, but ‘corals on artificial structures recovered faster from [the] mass bleaching event than the natural coral reef ecosystems,’ Toko Tanaya, lead author of the study and senior researcher with the Port and Airport Research Institute in Japan, told Mongabay in a phone call.
Within six years, the breakwaters recovered to near pre-bleaching levels, while ‘the coral cover on natural reefs barely recovered from bleaching,’ the authors write.
A very healthy coral reef is nestled among offshore oil platforms.
Fish species are rebounding off the coast of California due to their young finding a sanctuary in abandoned oil rigs.
“According to a 2014 study…the rigs were some of the most “productive” ocean habitats in the world, a term that refers to biomass – or number of fish and other creatures and how much space they take up – per unit area. The research showed the rigs to be about 27 times more productive than the natural rocky reefs in California….Subsequent studies showed that some species of rockfish produce 10 to 100 times more eggs and larvae at these platforms than at natural reefs.”
The world’s coral reefs are more plentiful than previously thought. “High-resolution satellite maps show that coral reefs cover an area of ocean larger than New Mexico,” reported Bloomberg News. That’s about twice the size of some prior estimates.
