An Overview Of Our Solution
Restoring coastal fisheries recruitment and habitat
Who is this solution impacting?
Ecosystem
Océanos/Costas
Community Type
Rural
Additional Information
- Population Impacted:
- Continent: Europa
Problem
Describe the problem
We restore coral reef fisheries habitat and juvenile fish recruitment to increase coastal fisheries at fastest possible rates. We focus on removing the major supply side limitations to fish stocks, inadequate juvenile recruitment and inadequate habitat shelter and food. This is the opposite strategy to conventional fisheries management, which does NOT increase fish numbers directly but try to control demand side removal by limiting fishing activity. Even if there is NO fishing activity, if there is no suitable habitat fish stocks will NOT recover, so most conventional efforts are doomed to long term failure because they can only work if there is prime habitat left to protect.
Biodiversity Impact
We collect post larval juvenile fish in the open ocean just after they metamorphose, & raise them in Biorock coral reef habitat, in which all corals, fish, & invertebrates show greatly increased growth rates, survival, & resistance to environmental stresses such as extreme high temperatures. 99.99+% of fish juveniles will be eaten by predators before they can find shelter: we short circuit that mortality & so can increase recruitment many orders of magnitude. Biorock reef habitat can be built in any size or shape, targeted for specific fish & shellfish species habitat. We can create many more levels of shelter holes than a natural reef has, & so quickly build up enormous populations of both invertebrates & fishes (please see attached video for a typical example). Therefore we can increase fish stock at the fastest possible rates by removing the three major limitations, inadequate shelter, inadequate food supply, & inadequate recruitment. Our method is the only one that INCREASES total amount of fisheries habitat & the rate at which juvenile fish find it. Since all marine organisms are attracted to Biorock habitats & grow much faster than normal with greater stress resistance, we greatly increase biodiversity (food supplies & genetic diversity) as well as physiological health. This is unlike artificial reefs that produce a species depauperate & untypical community. Conventional fisheries management aims to limit the number & size of pie slices taken, not to grow the pie itself, as our strategy does directly.
Solution
Degraded reefs lose complexity as rare species biodiversity & food chain loss precede biomass decline. Biorock & Ecocean technologies are the most powerful known tools to reverse this. Ecocean collects newly metamorphosed juvenile fish below the surface in open sea at night. The ENTIRE range of species & genetic diversity is collected without selecting them. ALL species are collected & given nearly 100% chance of survival instead of less than 0.01%. The resource cannot be depleted because only a very tiny fraction of the ocean is sampled. Coastal juvenile fish populations can be replenished 10,000 times or more quickly than normal. Biorock juvenile fish habitat can be built with holes of any size or shape in any number of layers. Much higher fish & shellfish population densities per unit area can be created than living coral reef, where populations are limited by lack of hiding places the right size & shape, & there is usually only one layer of holes. Biorock electrical fields greatly accelerate coral growth (typically 2-6 times or more) & survival from severe stress, accelerate growth & survival of oysters (more than 2 times), seagrasses, & almost all marine invertebrates. Biorock produces natural limestone marine organisms prefer to settle on, so recruitment is thousands of times faster than exotic materials like artificial reefs. Lobsters & crabs rapidly move into Biorock habitat, as do reef fish of all kinds, quickly building up dense populations. Extremely complex ecosystems result. No food is added, only energy as a safe very low intensity electrical field. // Discovery Bay, Jamaica is about 1 square kilometer, or 100 Hectares. The Fisheries Reserve covers the whole Bay and the fore reef waters on the ocean side. The Biorock coral reef will be over 600 square meters, with with 100 square meters in each of 6 different habitats in the Bay. They will be located in sandy areas near degraded formerly healthy coral reefs. We have worked there since the early 1950s. Pemuteran, Bali, Indonesia coral reef fisheries habitat is about 1 square kilometer. We already have around 70 Biorock reefs over half a kilometer in total length that have greatly restored fish populations in the Bay and created a world famous ecotourism attraction. We will focus now on restoring coral reefs on offshore banks used exclusively for fishing. We have worked there since 1998. Kuna Yala, Panama, about 2000 square kilometers of reef fishery habitat. The Kuna Indians are indigenous divers who never lost their land, culture, or institutions. Lobsters, the base of their economy, and their fish resources are collapsing. We have worked there since 1994. Comcaƒ??ac Ejido, Mexico, about 2000 square kilometers. The Comcaƒ??ac are Indigenous sea people from the deserts of the Sea of Cortes. Their fish and shellfish resources are badly depleted. We are about to start major mariculture and marine energy projects with them. Birdƒ??s Head area, West Papua, about 40,000 square kilometers. The indigenous Papuans have asked for our help because outside fishermen have bombed and poisoned their reefs. This area is regarded as the worldƒ??s center of marine species diversity.
Replicability
How many years has your solution been applied? 35 years // Have others reproduced your solution elsewhere? No // We work in close collaboration with community-based fisheries management groups & cooperatives. We set up projects & train local fishermen hands-on in all aspects of the projects. They greatly appreciate new knowledge & quickly find clever ways of applying it, because most fishermen are acute observers of natural phenomena & human impacts, & always speculating on how these interact with fisheries. We provide training & also long term advice & information resources. Their long-term success is up to them, as they are working for themselves, not our employees, so their results depend on how persistent & innovative they are. That depends on their individual motivation & on the values of their community. Both can be very variable & hard to predict. Where the locals are motivated & persistent, success is certain, where they are not, failure is likely due to lack of maintenance. The main problem is lack of funding for materials & to tide them over until new reefs are sufficiently productive. As we work with little or no funds, we cannot provide any financial support. Unfortunately no government, international funding agency, or big international NGO (BINGO) funds any serious ecosystem restoration. Instead they are threatened by restoration because they fear it will take funding from quick PR benefits of setting up marine parks, even if these are not managed & fail to produce effective results.
Human Well Being and Livelihood Impact
Billions of people derive most of their protein from coastal fisheries, especially from subsistence fishing in tropical coral reefs. Unlike commercial fish stocks wiped out by subsidized industrial fleets, coastal fisheries are extremely diverse & largely used for subsistence, not for commercial export. Artisanal fishermen receive little or no training or financial support from governments. Nevertheless they are aware that overfishing & habitat destruction are wiping out fish stocks & destroying the future, but they need to eat today. Almost all want to learn methods that would be more productive & less destructive. Our techniques are readily taught to subsistence fishermen who quickly grasp the principles & greatly appreciate that they are learning to manage their own environment in a way that will enrich future generations instead of stealing from them. But they will need access to loans to buy materials to apply the new methods of restoring fisheries. Perverse subsidies to industrial fleets that are destroying fisheries worldwide should be removed & invested instead for artisanal fishermen training & implementing large-scale coastal fisheries restoration. That would lift hundreds of millions of the poorest people on the planet out of poverty. Biorock technology can use sustainable solar, wind, wave, & ocean current energy. We are working with top innovators in wave & ocean current energy so that soon huge coral reefs can be grown using the immense, inexhaustible, & untapped energy of the ocean. // Our solutions are completely general, not site-specific. We now work across SouthEast Asia, Pacific, Indian Ocean, & Caribbean reefs. All coastal fisheries are in advanced habitat degradation as well as overfishing. Biorock grows coral reefs in warm waters & oyster reefs in cold waters, but can grow fisheries habitat in any environment. Muddy & sandy shorelines have few fish compared to coral reefs due to lack of shelter, which we can grow. We will start in communities where we have worked for many years & have close ties. Gaining trust of artisanal fishing communities takes time. That only comes with mutual respect & information transfer. Local fishermen are initially suspicious that anyone who has not grown up in their area can possibly tell them anything useful about the environment they have lived in all their life. It is only when they see that we can help them better understand their own experiences that their eyes open & suspicion of outsiders vanishes. Our first location to combine these two technologies that have been so successful on their own, & will far more powerful in combination, will be Discovery Bay, Jamaica, a classic case history of fisheries collapse. Tom Goreau grew up there since infancy with local fishermen, & is fluent in Jamaican patois. Biorock reef restoration was invented there in the mid 1980s. He should soon receive funding from Jamaican bauxite companies for large scale Biorock fisheries habitat restoration in the Discovery Bay Fisheries Reserve. We propose to add Ecocean restocking methods as soon as possible.