Project Restore is a flagship project at SIMS looking at restoring multiple connected marine habitats in Sydney Harbour, and is part of the wider Seabirds to Seascapes program led by the Department of Planning and Environment.
We are excited to report our project team is now complete, last month we welcomed two more Research Assistants (RA’s) Mitchell Brennan and Tom Burd to the team!
Behind the scenes the Project Restore team have been working away conducting site selection and planning for each of the habitats to be restored: kelp, seagrass beds, Living Seawalls and ReefPods. Last week with the weather in Sydney Harbour being spectacular the team took to the harbour to test surveying biodiversity methods at the potential restoration sites.
The next steps for Project Restore will be conducting baseline monitoring. This involves our RA’s in the field on SCUBA assessing current habitat degradation, running biodiversity transects and deploying remote underwater cameras to create baseline assessments of the chosen locations.
The team has also been out at local community events providing information about the project, the benefits of seascape restoration and how this initiative will enhance their local swimming areas in the long term.
Initial sampling at all locations around Sydney Harbour is scheduled to begin soon, so watch this space! In the meantime you can find out more about Project Restore and donate to this project here.
