Sydney Harbour living seawall instant success with marine life
Sydney Harbour real estate doesn’t get much better than this … for marine life. Find out why underwater creatures love their new homes on the seawall.
The views are a bit murky and it gets pretty chilly but to lots of little creatures this is the best new real estate in town.
Specially designed tiles were installed on the man-made seawall late last year at McMahons Point to create homes for underwater animals and plants.
Within hours the locals started moving in, which was a thrill for the scientists behind the research project.
“The most impressive thing was how quickly they were colonised,” Dr Maria Vozzo said.
“Mobile things like snails, they were right on it.”
Within a few weeks the scientists could see barnacles, mussels and oysters starting to grow. Now the tiles blend into the surrounding seawall at Sawmillers Reserve quite well as they are covered in natural tan coloured biofilms.
There are lots of different types of algae growing in the tiles and little arthropods are also creeping around.
The living seawalls project is being run by the Sydney Institute of Marine Science in Mosman and is researching methods to improve the ecological function of underwater artificial structures such as seawalls.
In Sydney Harbour more than half of the shoreline has been modified from natural habitat to artificial structures. The tiles give it a chance to become a more natural structure again.
“We’ve developed these tiles so we can use them to retrofit existing seawalls to improve the habitat and recover some of the lost habitat and function that would have been there,” Dr Vozzo said.
“In the past couple of decades people have done a lot to improve the water quality but it still is a very impacted harbour.
“We do what we can to maintain biodiversity as much as we can. There’s quite high levels of marine biodiversity and we want to preserve that.”
The project has collaborators from Macquarie University, UNSW and Sydney University alongside other PhD and masters students.
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