Restoration of deep-sea habitats

Marine ecosystems usually have long recovery times. Climate change is adding risk factors. Effects of passive restoration (protection measures) may take multiple decades before benefits may be felt. This is even more the case for deep-sea ecosystems. They have low energy density, slower biochemical processes and assemble species with long life cycle / span. Active restoration should be explored to help accelerate the restoration.

Proposals should build on and capitalise on the knowledge base developed and lessons learnt from the Horizon 2020 MERCES project, notably its census of European marine key habitats maps, degraded habitats maps, key habitats restoration potential and its trials on deep-sea restoration, as well as from other national or EU relevant past or ongoing projects in the field of deep-sea ecosystems exploration from Horizon 2020, EEA Grants and Horizon Europe (notably in topic HORIZON-CL6-2021-BIODIV-01-03 and HORIZON-CL6-2022-CLIMATE-01-02).

The restoration activities should take place in areas with degraded habitats, and where protection measures against the causes of their degradation are already in place.

Proposals should develop and test innovative and technically challenging active restoration of deep-sea habitats. For this reason, and the cost of accessing the deep-sea, only one project may be funded with the budget available. Proposals should integrate different disciplines and novel approaches for the restoration that consider connectivity (including migratory species & vertical connections) in space and time, ecosystem modelling, as well as on site access, observation, and monitoring.

The restoration focus should not be only on species traits targets (population, assemblage, genetic diversity, sex determination, etc.), but also on ecosystem functions including adaptation potential. The proposals should include abiotic changes due to climate impact scenarios in identifying niche and refuge niche.

Proposals should set up governance frameworks for the restoration by involving local and national relevant actors (those having an impact on the achievement of the restoration goals, those having an interest and those who are impacted by related actions) to enable acceptability, ownership and a mechanism for long-term commitment to the restoration that exceed typical business and political cycles on financing, managing, regulating, monitoring and enforcement. Some short-term objectives are required to allow for measurements of restoration impacts in a reasonably shorter time frame to get on the right trajectory, but then check on mid- to long- term (5-20 years) should be planned.

Proposals should advance the knowledge base on the socio-economic costs and benefits of deep-sea restoration: including addressing the socio-economic importance of deep-sea ecosystems; considering upscaling issues and costs with restoration of deep-sea habitats, and timescales considerations.

Proposals should identify and test additional protection and management measures of the areas, to support the active restoration interventions over the long time, and provide recommendations for their application for new protected areas.

The proposals should contribute to filling the gaps in assessing deep-sea biodiversity recovery valuing changes in ecosystem goods and services; and contribute to define a natural capital accounting for deep-sea habitats.

The projects funded under this topic should build links with other relevant projects and initiatives such as Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe projects in the field of deep-sea ecosystems and with projects funded under the European Mission ‘Restore our ocean and waters by 2030’, in particular with the Mission activities under objective 1 – protect and restore marine ecosystems and their biodiversity, and with the Mission lighthouse activities and Blue Parks, as well as with the Mission implementation monitoring system that will be part of the Mission Implementation Support Platform for reporting, monitoring and coordination of all relevant implementation activities. Proposals should outline a plan on how they intend to collaborate with other projects and initiatives, by e.g. participating in joint activities, workshops, common communication and dissemination activities, etc. Applicants should allocate the necessary budget to cover the plan. Relevant activities of the plan will be set out and carried out in close cooperation with relevant Commission services, ensuring coherence with related policy initiatives.

In order to achieve the expected outcomes in integrating and coordinating these different scaled approaches, international cooperation is strongly encouraged. A strong linkage should be ensured with the ongoing activities under the All-Atlantic Ocean Research and Innovation Alliance. Actions under this topic will build upon and link with Horizon projects. All in-situ data collected through actions funded from this call should follow INSPIRE principles and be available through open access repositories supported by the European Commission (Copernicus, GEOSS, and European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet). Where relevant, creating links to and using the information and data of the European Earth observation programme Copernicus, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is expected.

Collaboration with the relevant existing European Research Infrastructures is considered necessary.