Living Seawalls

We’ve recently installed Living Seawalls at Burns Bay Reserve.

Designed to enhance the marine habitat value of the area, Living Seawalls are artificial modular panels with complex surfaces that mimic features of the natural shoreline and provides habitat for marine life.

The Living Seawall installation at Burns Bay consists of 85 habitat panels with 10 control panels. The Habitat panel selections are a mixture of designs to allow the best chance for marine life to colonise. The types of panels include: Swim Through panels, Ridges panels, Rock Pool panels, Kelp Holdfast panels, Oyster Holdfast panels and control panels. The control panels are blank panels to see what would normally colonise if the habitat panels were not there.

The University of NSW has been studying existing installations and has found that the number of species living along the Living Seawalls has doubled when compared with unmodified concrete seawalls. In North Sydney, installation of the Living Seawalls has seen a 36% increase in the number of fish, seaweeds, and invertebrates along Sydney Harbour.

We will keep you updated on the Seawall’s progress!

This project was funded by Council’s Sustainability Levy in partnership with the NSW Government.