Artificial reefs of Europe: perspective and future

Artificial reefs have been placed in European waters for around 30 years. The majority now play a role in protecting valuable Mediterranean seagrass beds from trawl damage, and most aspire to a fisheries function. Until relatively recently, reef-building has been carried out locally, in some cases without national collaboration or international cooperation. This is changing; in 1991, Italian artificial reef scientists formed a national reef group to encourage liaison between research groups, and the Spanish created one in 1998. There is now also an association of Mediterranean artificial reef scientists. Research in Europe has reached a stage where scientific priorities for the future need to be developed in the light of previous research and experience. This is the aim, and the reason for the creation in 1995, of the European Artificial Reef Research Network (EARRN) funded by the European Commission "AIR" programme. Reefs have now been formally licensed and deployed in Finland, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, The Netherlands, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom, and Denmark, Ireland, Russia, and Sweden have an interest, although no specific reef structures have, as yet, been placed. Norway has deployed experimental concrete units and has an interest in the "rigs-to-reefs" concept.