Boosting saltmarsh management for fisheries species

This PhD will deliver fundamental research in support of managing saltmarshes, a coastal ecosystem with a
purported, yet unqualified, role as a nursery habitat for UK fisheries species. Saltmarshes provide multiple
ecosystem services, including flood protection, blue carbon sequestration and water quality remediation (Hudson et
al. 2021). They are central to Nature Based Solutions (NBS) of Shoreline Management Planning (SMP2),
biodiversity conservation and emerging blue-carbon offsetting. Marshes are a priority habitat for restoration and
conservation (25 Year Environment Plan, Defra) and integral to national biodiversity management (e.g., England
Biodiversity 2020 Strategy).
Historically, British saltmarshes were depleted to < 1/4 of their cover, many through land-conversion for agriculture
(Hudson et al. 2021). Restoring marshes is costly, involving significant engineering through 'managed
realignment', where defences are breached to convert terrestrial land into saltmarsh. Currently, the annual rate of
restoration lags strongly behind the rate of losses (45 vs105 hectares/year) (Miles & Richardson 2018). The biggest
barrier to implementing restoration is insufficient data to enable otherwise powerful instruments such as NBS,
Payment for Ecosystem services (PES) and National Habitat Compensation Programmes (Hudson et al. 2021). This
PhD will incentivise these instruments through quantitative substantiation of the ecological benefits of marsh
restoration and conservation to fisheries species.
Several species that use marshes have high fisheries value (e.g., seabass, mullet, brown shrimp), but are threatened
(eel) or their management is limited by data scarcity on nursery habitats (e.g., seabass, Defra 2021). Working with
and at the Wildfowl & Wetland Trust (WWT), the student will couple environmental research to stakeholder and
policy analyses, to identify barriers and solutions to boosting marsh management for fisheries species. The project
includes contrasts between natural and restored sites to inform on restoration benefits to fisheries.