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University of Auckland senior lecturer in marine science Dr Jenny Hillman is investigating whether artificial horse mussels made with shell waste can help bring back marine life to coastal waters. Her team received almost $1 million in Smart Ideas funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for the research. “Dredging by commercial fishing companies has damaged the sea floor so severely that little life is left on the seabed around much of New Zealand.

“We want to find the most environmentally sustainable way to restore New Zealand’s coasts, so we’re trying to upcycle shells from the mussel aquaculture industry that would otherwise go to landfill,” says Hillman, who works with the University’s Centre for Climate, Biodiversity and Society – Ngā Ara Whetū. Dense horse mussel beds once carpeted the sea floor around New Zealand, but have been wiped out by commercial bottom trawling or smothered with sediment that has washed off the land, she says. New Zealand horse mussels are now functionally extinct – meaning they no longer fulfil their role in the natural world.

Placing artificial horse mussels on the sea floor could later help scientists successfully transplant juvenile horse mussels raised in hatcheries into the coastal environment. Natural horse mussel beds might then have a chance to return. Most of the research in New Zealand up until now has focussed on restoring coastal areas by transplanting green-lipped mussels grown in aquaculture farms into the natural environment.

Source: European Commission