Seeing a larger number of species on urban coastlines – from marine animals to seaweed — is likely to improve the wellbeing of local people and visitors, new research from a team at Swansea University has revealed. The findings provide further evidence that biodiversity brings wide-ranging benefits.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that people may associate marine life such as seaweeds with unpleasant slimy textures and smells or perceive them to be messy additions to coastlines. As such, having a greater variety of coastal species may not lead to the same positive effects on wellbeing as are observed on land.

This is important because coastal structures like seawalls are becoming increasingly familiar sights and can be home to many different marine species. Many of them now incorporate measures to conserve or promote biodiversity, such as the Sea Hive project in Mumbles in Swansea, but how these might affect the perceptions and wellbeing of beach visitors isn’t well understood.

To understand how biodiversity may shape peoples’ views, scientists at Swansea University undertook a research study.

They recruited 937 participants from the UK and Ireland. They asked them how appealing, interesting, and calming they found images of seawalls with different numbers of seaweed and animal species on them.

The images included between zero and eight different marine species: comprising of different types of seaweeds, barnacles, limpets, mussels and anemones.

Dr Tom Fairchild of Swansea University, lead researcher, said:

“People found structures that had more species to be more appealing, interesting, and calming to look at. This suggests that high numbers of species provide a range of human benefits, despite occasional negative feelings towards species. This occurred because structures were perceived to be more “natural” and have greater “biodiversity” when they were home to a wide variety of sea life: strongly influencing how we see natural spaces.

To read the paper Click here