Christof Schygula from the University of Rostock spoke about Reef Nienhagen – the largest artificial reef in the Baltic Sea. The chair of the session, Mark Browne of University College Dublin spoke about the use of concrete planters on seawalls as an effective method of increasing urban biodiversity in Sydney Harbour. Juliette Jackson from the University of Plymouth who works on THESEUS spoke about the influence of environmental design features for marine life inhabiting coastal engineering structures. Florian Peine from the University of Rostock presented his research on the hydrodynamics and particle behaviour within artificial reefs in the Baltic Sea. Heather Hunt from the University of New Brunswick spoke about cobble-filled collectors as a monitoring tool for biodiversity patterns in rocky subtidal habitats and José Maria Fariñas-Franco from Queens University Belfast spoke about the restoration of degraded biogenic reefs in Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland.

Over 180 delegates from 22 countries came to the conference representing all continents and places as diverse as Australia, Brazil, California, Canada, Chile, Hong Kong, Israel, New Zealand, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Africa, South Carolina and Taiwan. There were also strong European contingents from all over the UK, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, France, Croatia, Belgium, Spain and Germany. The organising committee led by Richard Thompson (University of Plymouth) and other THESEUS partners - Louise Firth (Bangor University) and Steve Hawkins (University of Southampton) wish to thank the THESEUS project for sponsoring the session.

The next conference will be in Perth, Western Australia in January 2014, followed by Pisa in summer 2016.

Louise Firth