Eco-engineering for Climate Change—Floating to the Future

Oceans make 71% of our planet’s surface and coastal areas are home to over 50% of the worlds’ population, resulting in coastal hardening. This replacement of natural habitats with urban and industrial waterfronts, cannot provide ecosystem services similar to those offered by undisturbed coastlines. As a result, coastal infrastructures are considered as sacrificed zones with no environmental value. Ecological engineering is an evolving discipline with the aim of building more resilient and safer coastal and marine structures for people and nature, while maximizing ecosystems, social, and economical benefits. As humans are starting to exhaust the land resources in urban waterfronts, eyes are set to the open oceans. Floating offshore structures will add significant amounts of hard surfaces to the marine environment that will inevitably be colonized by marine life. Due to a combination of structural and hydrodynamic considerations, the communities that develop on floating structures are mainly filter feeding organisms, and are typically dominated by invasive and nuisance species. This is where ECO-engineering must come to play, as planners, designers, and developers must take concrete action towards reducing the ecological footprint of future floating structures. Novel floating urban marine environments must be carefully crafted to generate productive multifunctional structures that are teeming with life. This paper addresses current knowledge gaps that must be addressed with respect to the unique nature of marine life developing on floating structure.