Chengmin Sun¹ , Rudi Mai²

1 Center for Tropical Marine Fisheries Research, Hainan Institute of Tropical Agricultural Resouces, Sanya, 572025, Hainan, China
2 Tropical Biological Resources Research Center, Hainan Institute of Tropical Agricultural Resources, Sanya, 572025, Hainan, China
Author    Correspondence author
GMO Biosafety Research, 2025, Vol. 16, No. 1   
Received: 20 Nov., 2024    Accepted: 25 Dec., 2024    Published: 06 Jan., 2025

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Taking the coastal waters of Hainan as an example, this study evaluated the role of artificial reefs in the restoration of wild fish habitats, sorted out the empirical research results on the ecological functions and effects of artificial reefs at home and abroad in recent years, investigated the current status of artificial reef construction in the coastal waters of Hainan, and evaluated the impact of artificial reefs on fish community structure, diversity, biomass and ecosystem stability. The results show that artificial reefs significantly improve the fish habitat, increase fish species richness and resource biomass, and effectively promote the recovery of damaged habitats. Typical case analysis further proves that artificial reefs have achieved positive results in coral reef fish restoration, benthic habitat restoration and economic fish population reconstruction. However, the study also found that there are still challenges such as insufficient monitoring and poor management. In the future, it is necessary to strengthen long-term monitoring, optimize reef design and improve fishery management to give full play to the ecological and social benefits of artificial reefs and achieve sustainable recovery and utilization of fishery resources in Hainan's coastal waters. This study is of great significance for systematically evaluating the role of artificial reefs in the restoration of wild fish habitats and provides necessary reference for fishery resource conservation policies.

Artificial reefs; Habitat restoration; Fish diversity; Biomass; Hainan coastal waters