Tridge summary
A significant restoration project in Australia is underway to revive oyster reefs, which were greatly diminished by dredging during the colonial era. The initiative, inspired by the successful restoration of Windara Reef off South Australia's Yorke Peninsula in 2017, employs a novel approach to ecosystem recovery. This approach, spearheaded by Prof Sean Connell and Dr Dominic McAfee from the Southern Seas Ecology Lab, focuses on the restoration of not just oysters but also other species that contribute to their habitat and growth. The strategy includes the transplantation of canopy-forming kelp on Windara's reefs, which has shown to effectively prevent turf algae, a common issue in urbanised coasts, from impeding oyster settlement. This multi-species restoration technique aims to foster more resilient and stable ecosystems and might lower restoration costs by leveraging natural recruitment processes rather than relying on costly hatchery-sourced stock.
Disclaimer:The above summary was generated by Tridge's proprietary AI model for informational purposes.
Original content
Ambitious restoration programme for Aussie oyster reefs. Oyster reefs carpeted thousands of kilometres of Australian coastline 200 years ago, but were dredged to near extinction within a century of colonial settlement. An ambitious nationwide restoration programme now seeks to bring them back. In South Australia, the largest reef restoration in the Southern Hemisphere, Windara Reef, was constructed in 2017 to restore the ecosystem of the native mud oyster, Ostrea angasi, off the Yorke Peninsula. Following construction of Windara Reef’s 149 individual reefs, a layer of fast-growing turf algae covered the new reef surfaces, forming a barrier to baby oysters trying to settle atop the reef. Such turf algae are a global phenomenon that is common on urbanised coasts where the algae opportunistically carpets hard surfaces. To help restore South Australia’s lost oyster reefs, Prof Sean Connell and Dr Dominic McAfee of the Southern Seas Ecology Lab in the School of Biological Sciences and ...
Source: Fish Focus
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