Standard Presentation (12 minutes) Australian Marine Sciences Association 2025 Conference

Reefense: living shoreline mosaics can achieve ecological and engineering outcomes with interdisciplinary design (119657)

Rebecca Morris 1 , Jenny Shinn 2 , Ryan Lowe 3 , Marco Ghisalberti 3 , Kelly Kibler 4 , Sandra Casas 5 , Eric Sparks 6 , Prashansa Shrestha 7 , David Bushek 2 , Jaden Akers 6 , Justin Gerald 3 , Alex Goad 8 , Ximing Guo 2 , Reid Holland 2 , Hongyue Jin 7 , Danielle Kreeger 2 , Brendan Lanham 1 , Jerome La Peyre 5 , Cynthia Lupton 6 , Hani Nassif 2 , Andrew Pomeroy 1 , Ella Rothermel 9 , Michael Ruszala 2 , Madhuwanthi Rupasinghe 1 , Scott Rikard 10 , Richard Riman 2 , Rackel San Nicolas 1 , Stephen Swearer 3 , Jyotismita Taye 4 , Nigel Temple 11 , Manisha Thenuwara 4 , Peter Vien 4 , Zhenwei Wang 2 , Mason Williams 10
  1. The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VICTORIA, Australia
  2. Rutgers University, Port Norris, New Jersey, United States
  3. University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia
  4. University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, United States
  5. Louisiana State University , Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States
  6. Mississippi State University, Biloxi, Mississippi, United States
  7. University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, United States
  8. Reef Design Lab, Mentone, Victoria, Australia
  9. Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, Wilmington, Delaware, United States
  10. Auburn University, Dauphin Island, Alabama, United States
  11. University of South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama, United States

Living shorelines that comprise oyster reefs within a mosaic of multiple coastal habitats can be a resilient and adaptive coastal protection alternative to conventional engineered structures. The success of an oyster reef living shoreline is based on the evolution of a stable base-substrate delivering initial coastal protection in the short-term, to the growth of a living oyster reef and associated habitats in the longer-term that can enhance protection along with other ecosystem services. The design of an oyster reef living shoreline therefore needs to integrate the biology and ecology of oysters with the engineering design of coastal structures that considers the influence on physical processes (i.e., hydrodynamics and sediment transport), requiring interdisciplinary efforts for such projects to be successful. “Reefense” is an innovative program established by the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to design and construct biogenic reef-based living shorelines from first principles integrating engineering, ecology, adaptive biology and techno-economics. Here, we use the example of the first 3 years of Reefense to illustrate an interdisciplinary approach to the design of oyster reef living shorelines with the aim of informing future development of global teams that can produce the research required to underpin large-scale implementation.