Abstract

In Guadeloupe Island (Lesser Antilles) “mooring areas with light equipment” for yachting is a concept tested as an alterna-tive to the construction of harbors or marinas susceptible to heavily impact the marine environment. It consists in installing permanent and obligatory moorings in areas favorable to receive yachting boats. Anchoring is forbidden in order to protect benthic communities (seagrass beds and (or) coral reefs). Ecological moorings were experimentally designed from concrete blocks presenting different types of artifacts (add-ons like artificial anfractuosities, metallic electrified grids, plastic tubes…) in order to increase their attractive power towards fish and benthic organisms. The present work compared the efficiency of five types of moorings to enhance marine biodiversity. Fish species richness, fish numbers and biomass, spe-cies richness and abundance of benthic organisms were quantitatively assessed around the different types of moorings. The data obtained were then analyzed with a redundancy analysis (RDA). The conclusions of this work are that these de-scriptors of marine biodiversity were significantly correlated to the degree of architectural complexity of the mooring con-crete blocks.

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