The question is oriented to think about a strategy for protecting coasts (e.g. beaches, mangroves) and coastal human investments against surge when existing reef crests deteriorate or disappear in the future.
I think certainly artificial protection will have to be done to protect the coastal development. The nature also plays a role in many areas the coastal development leading to near shore contamination sewage with high H2S, HCO3- concentration and lower pH has led to formation of carbonate beach rocks and these inturn are going to act as shield. I have observed this in Kuwait coastal waters, where the pH drop was higher than expected.
I am not sure if coral transplantation is valid for all regions, in the areas where I am coming from with summer time sea surface temperature 33-35 the corals transplantation will not be very successful espically in near shore shallow muddy waters which bulk of northern Gulf is. Although saying that we have seen some success in coral survival. Mangroves introduced about 20 years back are showing nice growth and have acts as efficient surface stabilizer.
With regards to coral transplantation, I think this will only help in attempting to restore coral reef ecosystems, especially for the benefit of fish populations. This would not be an efficient and effective method for protecting coasts as it is too costly and labour intensive as well as the success rates are very variable from location to location.
Hi, I agree with Saif and Marcia. One of the best solutions could be the installation of artificial reefs not only to protect the coastline, but also to promote marine life; algae, invertebrates, and fishes.
The restoration of degraded reefs, mainly those reefs which frequently suffer bleaching events, could not be viable at long time because of the recurrence of the bleaching phenomenon at the same area.
We partially restored a small reef that suffered strong bleaching in 1987 and 1997, a, and after 6 years it has been completely destroyed again by a strong bleaching because the water temperature stays above 31 degrees for months.
I hope I have helped somewhat with my answer
Greetings
José Luis
Thank you very much to all for contributing to strenghthening the criterion of taking into account local particularities, the importance of ingeenering for specific purposes (supposedly to be a quite frequent intervention in th future), and the limitation of applying coral restoration (transplat) only in places where damaging factors are expected to be not frequently recurrent.
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