Skip to content

Can jetties replace rocky shores?

Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
LinkedIn
Leanne Bonnici
Leanne Bonnici

The marine environment needs to be conserved because all enjoy it in summer for leisure and fishermen depend on it for their livelihood. Our rocky shores also hold a unique ecology and it must be studied as a whole to understand how a seemingly insignificant crab or limpet can affect other species we might consider more important.

Our natural environment can be likened to a puzzle having thousands of pieces. If one piece is removed or changed, it will result in a different or incomplete picture. Jetties are artificial structures, in an otherwise natural matrix of rocky shore habitat, which add a new piece to the puzzle. They are built at right angles to the shore and are much smoother than natural rock. These differences are expected to change the environment and species living there. Leanne Bonnici (supervised by Dr Joseph A. Borg and Prof. Patrick J. Schembri) studied these jetties to understand how they would affect the big picture.

Bonnici studied three sites on the northeastern coast of the Maltese Islands (Little Armier, White Tower Bay and Għajn Żejtuna). The organisms on jetties in these areas were sampled from the mediolittoral zone — that part of the shore that is regularly submerged and exposed to the air. Sampling showed that the most abundant algae were low-growing green algae (Cladophoropsis sp.), and a red alga (Jania rubens). The algae serve as a source of food and shelter to other species.

IMG_6874

The most common animals were crustaceans, molluscs, and polychaetes. Polychaetes are worms that possess lots of hair-like structures (chaetae). The most common polychaetes were small voracious predators a few millimetres in length. The diverse crustaceans included small cone shaped barnacles (Chthamalus spp.), which spend most of their life attached to rocks. Other abundant crustaceans included minute shrimp-like swimming animals known as amphipods (Hyale sp. and Ampithoe sp.) that are typically found amidst algae. The molluscs recorded included different species of limpets Patella spp., as well as the chiton Acanthochitona sp.; all of these are usually found attached to the substratum, although they do move to graze on algae.

Bonnici found that jetties share some species with rocky shores; however, jetties always had a lower diversity and fewer numbers of individuals living on them. Therefore one can conclude that jetties cannot replace natural rocky shores.

Keeping to the puzzle analogy, if we know how modifying a ‘piece’ of the environment changes the other pieces, it will help maintain the whole picture. This study will help better manage how jetties affect organisms and make the most out of these artificial structures.

 

This research is part of an M.Sc. in Biology at the Faculty of Science. It was partly funded by the Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship (Malta), which is part-financed by the European Union – European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II – Cohesion Policy 2007-2013, “Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality Of Life”.

Author

More to Explore

Fostering Creativity and Community: The ART Connect Project at the University of Malta Library

The Library is, in many ways, the beating heart of the University of Malta (UM). The pulse of intellectual life can be felt most profoundly amongst the quiet shelves lined with books and the many students and academics lining the Library’s work desks with their noses deep in their projects. In this sense, the Library is also symbolic of the University’s overall health and vitality, so it is important to balance serious work with serious play.

The evolution of the ART Connect Project has been a journey of dedication and transformation. Inspired by the vision of new librarians and a desire to revamp the Library’s decor, what was once a seed of an idea has now matured into a vibrant platform for artistic expression, collaboration, and community building.

The ART Connect Project aims to connect people through creativity, foster collaboration, and transform spaces, inviting artists and art enthusiasts to celebrate the power of art.

Meeting Challenges Halfway at the Malta Book Festival 2023

Malta boasts 58 registered publishing entities, hosting hundreds of authors writing books across a wide swathe of genres and formats. These numbers emerge from an NSO survey into the book industry, conducted on the basis of the year 2021. Effectively, we could say that there are ‘more authors than churches’ in Malta, with over 700 authors populating the National Book Council’s database.

This hints at a varied industry, the stakeholders of which all fall under the remit of the National Book Council, which seeks to assist, support, and represent Maltese authors and publishers, as well as related industry stakeholders such as translators and illustrators. While the Maltese context does have its own particularities, neither is it immune to the industry’s wider, global realities, a case in point being the price hike on paper caused by the war in Ukraine, which continues to be felt across the board. Maltese publishers must also bear the brunt of this unfortunate phenomenon.

The National Book Council continues to advocate for increased governmental support to aid publishers, whether in this particular challenge or others, and it also offers direct financial aid through the Malta Book Fund, which last year issued a grand total of €120,000 to various industry stakeholders, targeting projects of high cultural value which may not have a straightforward route to market success.

But while some challenges may be met halfway through financial incentives, others require a systemic — or cultural — shift in attitude from all parties involved, which takes a certain degree of workshopping to be borne out. The slow uptake of ebooks bears pondering (the NSO survey saw 146 new ebooks issued in Malta in 2021, contrasted with printed counterparts of 418 in the same year), as does the worryingly high number of authors published without adequate contracts in place.

Maximising Solar Panel Efficiency: The DustPV Project

The DustPV project, led by Prof. Ing. Joseph Micallef, aims to determine the optimal timing for cleaning solar panels using innovative sensor technology and weather data analysis. By addressing the challenges of dust accumulation on photovoltaic panels, the project seeks to enhance solar panel performance and contribute to Malta’s renewable energy goals.

No comment yet, add your voice below!


Add a Comment