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Coastal urbanization leads to the destruction and the fragmentation of intertidal and shallow subtidal habitats and the loss of associated ecological functions and ecosystem services. Primarily designed to achieve technical functions, maritime infrastructures also provide artificial environments for the establishment of benthic life and attract juvenile and adult individuals of numerous species. The lack of ecological considerations in coastal engineering, however, limits the potential for survival and growth of marine life both for mobile and sessile species. Thus, the paucity of marine communities in urbanized coastal zones has been described all around the world from Australia to the USA and also in the Mediterranean Sea. However, different recent projects have highlighted that ecological functions of maritime infrastructures such as seawalls, dikes, pontoons, can be enhanced working mainly on construction materials properties, water retention, and habitat complexity. Thanks to a constant knowledge development in urban marine ecology, different technical solutions begin to be available. Here we present two case studies in the Mediterranean Sea where solutions have been designed to improve ecological functions of different kind of maritime infrastructures: pile wharfs, riprap dikes and buoy mooring systems. If technical solutions are emerging, there are still great challenges ahead. Low-cost solutions adapted to different technical and ecological contexts have to be developed to promote large-scale ecological engineering programs with potentially significant ecological gains.

Innovative solutions for the enhancement of biodiversity on coastal infrastructures : case studies of artificial port nurseries and modular mooring reefs