7.1 Critical aspects in monitoring plans

Scientific research on artificial reefs has gathered pace internationally since the 1950s. Many researchers have attempted to demonstrate the effects of anthropogenic manipulation of habitat complexity, but much of the research has been compromised by associated legal or financial constraints that limited the ability to develop formal hypothesis testing (Bortone, 2006), not providing acceptable levels of replication (Kock, 1982; Fabi and Fiorentini, 1994; Fujita et al., 1996; Charbonnel et al., 2002) and/or not avoiding pseudoreplication – defined as the use of inferential statistics to test for treatment effects with data from experiments where either treatments are not replicated (though samples may be) or replicates are not statistically independent (Kock, 1982; Bortone et al., 1994; Jensen et al., 1994).

Research conducted over the past four decades indicates that resource managers would be in favour of using artificial reefs as part of an alternative management strategy, but they would need information at different levels proving the effectiveness of artificial reefs for certain purposes (e.g. fisheries management). While the general opinion is that it is necessary to know every aspect on artificial reefs to fully appreciate their potential role in the marine ecosystems and to include them into management plans, a more realistic approach would be to focus research on the gathering of data on specific areas of interest that are based around the primary goals of the artificial reef construction (discussed in detail in Chapter 5).

Therefore, a performance monitoring plan should be developed during the first steps of the planning process of an artificial reef. This plan should focus on parameters that define the success of the artificial reef based on the reef objectives, and must forecast collection of data before and after the reef deployment, both at the reef site and on adjacent natural habitats. Scientific assessment of artificial reefs should be designed and undertaken by experts in ecological and biological marine sciences during the reef planning phase and implemented prior the artificial reef construction or on already existing artificial reefs. As scientific objectives surrounding complex ecological questions are very broad and include a number of more specific goals, the type and quantity of data to be collected depend on the objectives of the artificial reef and the kind of questions to be answered.