To mark this year’s United Nations World Oceans Day, we highlight a new network dedicated to Marine Animal Forest to raise global awareness and protect the Ocean resources for the next generations.
The ocean covers about 70 % of Earth’s surface and, despite its size, it remains a mystery. Yet life below water suffers from climate change and pollution.
Major marine biodiversity hotspots occur within and around extended three-dimensional communities known as Marine Animal Forests (MAFs). MAFs are biotic assemblages mainly composed of suspension-feeding organisms like sponges, gorgonians, hard corals, bryozoans, bivalves, etc., that form canopies like the trees or shrubs on land, thus creating underwater forests becoming a real oasis of life.
In the last report from the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) about progress in meeting the Aichi Targets (September 2020), Coral Reefs and other ocean benthic ecosystems showed the most rapid increase in extinction risk of all assessed groups. The target expected to reduce vulnerability through restoration and reducing threats has not been achieved by 2020.
Some of the main threats to these communities are bottom trawling, ocean warming and acidification, contamination, and over exploitation of coastal resources, which also involve the impact of tourism.
UN declared for the next nine years, 2021-2030, two important international decades: the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and The Ocean Decade. These initiatives aim, through awareness and action, to prevent, halt, and reverse the degradation of ecosystems whilst develping ocean science solutions for sustainable development. Both aims are represented in the MAF-WORLD project, gathering people from all over the world to face the challenges.
One of the main problems is that data on Marine Animal Forests is highly fragmented and not exhaustive. There is a compelling need to create a common, international, and trans-disciplinary baseline to improve the current situation.
Introducing Marine Animal Forest COST Action
To address this challenge, a new collaborative research network of scientists and experts was set up in October 2021 to build up an innovative and advanced network. The network brings together a broad community of scientists from almost 40 countries and organisations across Europe and beyond.
The COST Action Marine Animal Forest of the World (MAF World) creates for the first time an all-inclusive network of scientific disciplines specialised in MAFs. The network gathers experts in biology, ecology, geophysics, social science, education, and oceanography with a focus on coral reefs, sponge grounds, deep corals, coralligene, and bivalve or polychaete beds.
“We need quick responses based on sound science, not only for conservation and management of our oceans (and especially for MAFs) but also to set up a realistic regeneration program”
Dr Sergio ROSSI, COST Action Chair
This Action is an opportunity to create a common, international, and trans-disciplinary baseline to compile, organise, and give structure and sense to all the accumulated data on Marine Animal Forests.
MAF World network aims to develop an integrated vision that will fuel research and steer future policies on crosscutting sustainability-driven issues related to the fragmented governance of these benthic ecosystems in coastal and open ocean waters.
“We need to move forward creating a trans-disciplinary dialogue with partners across academia, policymaking, and civil society. We must design inclusive spaces to develop agreed protocols with the most appropriate tools to understand the animal forests’ role within the marine environment. By achieving this, we can ultimately inform management, restoration, and conservation initiatives with the best common practices to foster the regenerative processes we need in this critical moment.” Dr Rossi concludes.
This network offers an opportunity to build a scientific, technical and stakeholder community around a unique conceptual framework of MAF ecosystem services and how to protect and restore them, creating a baseline reference knowledge together with practical tools for the conservation of these benthic habitats, following the challenge of the UN’s Ocean Decade: ‘The Science We Need for the Ocean We Want’.
Additional information
View the Action website
View the Network website