Marine Eco-engineering Research Unit projects

Dr Antony Knights is Co-PI of two NERC INSITE (Influence of Man-made Structures in the Ecosystem) funded grants (DREAMS and INSITE Synthesis). He works closely with Dr Anaëlle Lemasson, who is a Post-doctoral Fellow on both the DREAMS and INSITE Synthesis projects, and Dr Louise Firth (INSITE Synthesis).
DREAMS is a collaborative project with Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) and Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science (Cefas), and partnership with Texas A & M University at Corpus Christi, Harte Research Institute, USA.  DREAMS is a highly integrated project designed to develop new understanding of how man-made structures, and different decommissioning strategies for them, influence the structure, functioning and dynamics of marine ecosystems and affect delivery of ecosystem services from a whole ecosystem perspective. 
Our approach – to use novel integration and analyses of existing data from a wide range of sources, using structured, systematic and meta-analytic approaches, to quantify the effects of man-made structures on ecosystems and services.

The Pacific oyster is non-native to the UK but abundant on its shores, and so it is important that we understand what makes it a successful invader. The goal of this project is to identify interactions between Pacific oysters and key intertidal organisms which may lead to either the success or failure of oyster survival. Working with Arc Marine, frames of tiles with differing levels of complexity are being deployed at Torquay marina, UK in an ongoing project that will largely focus on the movement and grazing of limpets in response to substrate complexity and how this affects the settlement of oysters on the tiles.

PhD student Charlotte Clubley is supervised by Dr Antony Knights, Dr Louise Firth, Professor David Bilton (University of Plymouth), Tiago Silva (Cefas) and Louisa Wood (Blue Marine Foundation). She is leading this project as a part of her PhD: ‘Testing environment filters as mechanisms of ecosystem resilience to non-native species invasion’.

Penang Island, Malaysia is one of the most densely populated places on earth. In response to rising human populations, a number of large artificial islands are being constructed to provide residential, commercial and leisure infrastructure. 

Dr Louise Firth has been working with Dr Su Yin Chee from Universiti Sains Malaysia to devise eco-engineering solutions to compensate for the impacts on the marine environment (Chee et al, 2021).

The research team have characterised the present status and historical changes to the coastline of Penang (Chee et al. 2017). They have also been trialling a range of eco-engineering options in Penang, to test the efficacy of these solutions in a tropical context – to date they have only been tested in temperate conditions (Evans et al. 2016; Morris et al. 2017, and Morris et al. 2018).