Repairing recruitment processes with sound technology to accelerate habitat restoration

Humanity’s ambitions to revive ecosystems at large scales require solutions to move restoration efforts beyond the small scale. There are increasing calls for technological solutions to reduce costs and facilitate large-scale restoration through the use of emerging technologies using an adaptive pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecological applications 2021-09, Vol.31 (6), p.1-7
Main Authors: Williams, Brittany R., McAfee, Dominic, Connell, Sean D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustics
Animals
Aquatic habitats
bioacoustics
Communications
conservation
Cues
Ecosystem
ecosystem restoration
Environmental restoration
Environmental Restoration and Remediation
habitat loss
Habitats
Highways
Marine technology
New technology
R&D
Recruitment
Research & development
Restoration
Sound
soundscape enrichment
supply‐side ecology
Technology
Underwater
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Summary:Humanity’s ambitions to revive ecosystems at large scales require solutions to move restoration efforts beyond the small scale. There are increasing calls for technological solutions to reduce costs and facilitate large-scale restoration through the use of emerging technologies using an adaptive process of research and development. We show how technological enrichment of marine soundscapes may provide a solution that repairs the recruitment process to accelerate the recovery of lost marine habitats. This solution would solve the problems of current practice that largely relies upon natural recruitment processes, which carries considerable risk where recruitment is variable or eroded. By combining the literature with laboratory experiments, we describe evidence for “highways of sound” that convey navigable information for dispersing life stages in search for adult habitat. We show that these navigational cues tend to be silenced as their habitat is lost, creating negative feedbacks that hinders restoration. We suggest that reprovisioning soundscapes using underwater technology offers the potential to reverse this feedback and entice target organisms to recruit in greater densities. Collective evidence indicates that the application of soundscape theory and technology may unlock the recruitment potential needed to trigger the recruitment of target organisms and the natural soundscapes they create at large scales.
ISSN:1051-0761
1939-5582
DOI:10.1002/eap.2386