A WWII shipwreck has been reborn as a coral reef by sea creatures

An eight-year study of the SS Thistle­gorm wreck reveals that marine life has trans­formed it into an arti­fi­cial reef inhab­it­ed by dozens of species.

A research team at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bologna in Italy worked with vol­un­teer divers to observe and mark organ­isms on a list of under­wa­ter clas­si­fi­ca­tions. At the end of the study, 71 of the 72 list­ed taxa were observed on the wreck.

The research team says the more we know about such arti­fi­cial reefs, the bet­ter we can pro­tect nat­ur­al reefs. In the future, both arti­fi­cial and nat­ur­al reefs may be used to increase marine biodiversity.

“The SS cys­tre­gome is a com­pelling exam­ple of how arti­fi­cial reefs can main­tain com­mu­ni­ty struc­tures sim­i­lar to those of nat­ur­al reefs,” the researchers wrote in their pub­lished paper.

It’s not the only ship­wreck inhab­it­ed by marine life. Arti­fi­cial reefs tend to mir­ror larg­er nat­ur­al reefs that are near­by. So is the SS Sistre­gome wreck in the north­ern Red Sea.

Soft coral (Den­droneph­thya), moray eel (Gym­notho­rax javan­i­cus), squir­rel (Sar­go­cen­tron), bat­fish (Platax), ray caran d’Ache, red sea clown­fish (Amphipri­on bicinc­tus), hump­head (Cheil­i­nus undu­la­tus), etc. It is one of the rep­re­sen­ta­tive marine organisms.

In addi­tion, the pop­u­la­tions of these marine organ­isms seem to have remained fair­ly sta­ble dur­ing the sur­vey peri­od, although there were some fluc­tu­a­tions due to sea­son­al and water tem­per­a­ture changes.

Such a com­pre­hen­sive study was made pos­si­ble in the frame­work of the project “Under­wa­ter Tourism for the Envi­ron­ment”, with the help of cit­i­zen sci­en­tists in wrecks. The project is being imple­ment­ed in sev­er­al loca­tions in the Red Sea.

“This cit­i­zen sci­ence approach allows par­tic­i­pants to per­form their usu­al activ­i­ties (vol­un­teers’ behav­ior remains unchanged dur­ing the study) and col­lect casu­al­ly observed data,” the researchers wrote.

“To ana­lyze the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the data col­lect­ed by the par­tic­i­pants, we com­pared it with the data col­lect­ed by the con­trol divers.

Sci­en­tists say arti­fi­cial reefs could be a way to reduce touris­m’s pres­sure on nat­ur­al reefs and pro­tect some reef-depen­dent species as cli­mate change con­tin­ues to impact the oceans. think­ing about.