Artificial reefs and mariculture: the Italian experiences

Stock enhancement and protection of coastal areas against trawling have always been the Italian primary goals for artificial reef deployment. The first experiences in eutrophic waters soon revealed that there is also a potential for recycling the energy present in the marine environment and for enhancing the reef productivity through mariculture. Starting from these observations, many efforts are being done to develop open-sea mariculture technology inside the artificial reefs deployed in the Adriatic Sea. The aim is to create "marine farms" where fishermen can carry out different activities: fishery with set gears, harvesting of mussels and other bivalves wild settled on the artificial substrates, suspended shellfish farming and finfish on-growing. The paper describes the techniques utilized and the main results achieved. Some techniques have been already applied on large-scale artificial reefs, while others are still on an experimental level.