“Israel’s bustling city of Eilat, at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba and Red Sea, is renowned for beaches, hotels and one of the world’s northernmost coral reefs.
Magnificent, colorful, diverse corals, sponges, giant clams, fish and other marine life make these reefs a national and world treasure. Barely 40 feet offshore and only five miles long, the reefs link with Egypt’s reefs along the Sinai Desert to the south and lie just miles from reefs off Aqaba, Jordan, to the east.
But Eilat’s corals are being loved to death.
Over 60,000 city residents join hundreds of thousands of tourists every year from Israel, Europe, the United States, newly friendly Middle Eastern countries and beyond. The new Eilat airport could bring even more, once COVID-19 travel restrictions ease.
Pre-COVID, the reefs were already hosting over 350,000 scuba dives and many more snorkeling visits annually. Even careful visitors take a toll, and some aren’t careful or are just clumsy novices.
Israel’s current population of nine million people could grow to 15 million within 30 years. Eilat’s population could surge from 55,000 to at least 100,000 in even less time. Pressure on the fragile reefs will inevitably intensify.
How can Israel accommodate all these people and still protect precious reef habitats?
Wildlife authorities could close off more sections of the system, limit visitors or reduce the number of dives per location per year. But these measures would deny access to this incredible area for people who journey many miles to experience what some describe as visiting another planet. It would also reduce the economic value that many see in nature preservation.
In the long run, such tactics could actually decrease popular and financial support for the reefs. One recent study found that diving tourism alone brings over $23 million a year to Eilat, providing an enormous impetus for reef preservation.
Researchers from Ben-Gurion and Tel Aviv Universities, the Technion and the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research Institute are studying ways to actively restore reefs and create artificial reefs (ARs).
They believe the solution lies not in restricting access to the natural reefs, but in protecting them, while building man-made structures that entice people to visit and teach them how to take better care of reefs throughout the world.
A place to call home
Oceans teem with larvae, hatchlings and adults looking for homes, hiding places and food.
Like natural reefs, ARs rise above the seafloor, offer multiple nooks and crannies and provide hard surfaces for corals, sponges and shellfish to attach and grow. They create new habitats, ecological niches, living quarters and food supplies for diverse species, enabling more to survive, thrive and reproduce.
Prof.Nadav Shashar of Ben-Gurion University’s Eilat campus deployed his first medium-size AR, Tamar, in 2007. Six years later, Tamar had already become a flourishing habitat for thousands of fish and other marine organisms.
Today, Tamar’s unique design and many corals, gorgonians, sponges, fish and shellfish attract both novice and veteran divers who want to observe the reef colonization process in action.
Shashar and his team also partnered with Jordanian colleagues to plan and install an AR off the Aqaba coast, while teaching coral preservation and restoration in Honduras and other parts of the world, and building relationships with marine biologists in other Red Sea nations. His team and local divers are also trying to repair sections of natural reefs that were badly damaged by storms.
Planting ‘oceanic trees’
The Jewish National Fund has planted trees in Israel since 1901. Perhaps planting “oceanic trees” (corals) and installing artificial reefs in the Gulf of Aqaba could be Israel’s next nature-enhancing project.
The BGU-Technion team recently received small grants from the Israeli Diving Federation and the Eilat municipality toward an innovative larger AR pilot project.
This signals a growing change in attitudes by the diving community and local governments toward artificial reefs as an important part of the solution to too-much-love challenges….”
View the whole story here: https://www.jns.org/saving-the-red-seas-coral-reefs-by-building-fake-ones/