Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration offers a ray of hope in an increasingly gloomy scenario. This book is the first presentation of revolutionary new methods for restoring damaged marine ecosystems. It discusses new techniques for greatly increasing the recruitment, growth, survival, and resistance to stress of marine ecosystems, fisheries, and eroding shorelines, maintaining biodiversity and productivity where it would be lost. The book provides experimental proof that mild electrical stimulation results in increased settlement, increased growth, and reduced mortality for a wide variety of marine organisms, including corals, oysters, sponges, sea-grasses, and salt-marsh grasses. In addition to the diversity of ecosystems and geographic regions covered, the contributors from fourteen nations across the globe make this work the first truly global study of marine ecosystem restoration.

"As this planet spins ever faster on a collision course with humanity, Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration shines positive light on a new direction for coral reef and shoreline restoration. It is a welcome addition to the literature. The volume takes us through 11 case studies first presented at the World Conference on Ecological Restoration in Me´rida, Mexico, in August 2011. It reports on methods for enhancing shorelines and restoring corals reefs, oyster beds, sea grass beds, and salt marshes. ... This volume challenges the common mantra of coral reef conservation that managing coral reefs is really managing people, not reefs. Goreau and Trench take us into a world of technology that amplifies biology and initiates ecological self-restoration using low voltage electrical current through metal frames to enhance the skeletal growth of reef corals and other calcifying organisms. ... The case studies are impressive demonstrations suggesting that electrified iron frames can be used to restore beaches, generate beautiful reefs, and grow more oysters."—Phillip Dustan, College of Charleston, South Carolina, in The Quarterly Review of Biology, Volume 90"This excellent work deals with ways mild electrical stimulation can enhance settlement and growth and reduce the mortality of such marine organisms as corals, oysters, and sponges as well as sea grasses and salt marshes in temperate and tropical ecosystems. Each chapter is formatted like a brief scientific manuscript, with an introduction and materials/methods, results, discussion, references, and acknowledgments sections. … In addition to the content the volume's 19 chapters provide, a companion CD contains all the photographs and graphs from the book along with presentations from two international ecosystem restoration conferences. Summing Up: Recommended. Senior-level undergraduates, graduate students, researchers/faculty, and professionals interested in ecosystem restoration."—A. K. Volety, Florida Gulf Coast University, in CHOICE Magazine"We, and the rest of life with whom we share this planet, will have to survive in the future with an ocean that is hotter, higher, and more acidic than at any time in the recent evolutionary past. The ideas presented in this book will buy us time. They highlight the possible. They empower us with simple, cost effective, and sustainable solutions for universal problems. The ideas in this book encourage us to reach into the only tool kit we have for broad-scale, long-lasting solutions. They exhort us to harness the restorative power of nature."—James W. Porter, PhD, Josiah Meigs Professor of Ecology and Marine Sciences, University of Georgia

Thomas J. Goreau, Robert Kent Trench