Resilience, namely how an ecosystem can absorb disturbance and how quickly it can recover, is a key component of ecosystem health. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are the major tool for marine conservation management to help provide such resilience. It is perceived that MPAs increase the resilience of ecosystems to natural and anthropogenic stressors, for example against the effects of climate change, by having a wider range of organisms within the MPA that can provide the necessary ecosystem functions. In such a system, if one species is lost others will be available to maintain that function. This ecosystem resilience has two aspects: capacity to tolerate disturbance (known as sensitivity or resistance) and ability to rebuild after a disturbance when necessary (recovery). Resistance can be viewed as the ability of an ecosystem to absorb disturbance before changing its structure, while recovery relates to the rate of return to a steady state following perturbation. Although much has been discussed about the resilience value of MPAs and their networks (primarily in the tropics), it is difficult to formally test due to the inherent role of MPAs to protect habitats from disturbance, and the need for extensive pre-disturbance baseline data. A great opportunity has arisen to assess this claim of MPA resilience and test whether resilience increases with MPA age (and thus period of protection). During January and February 2014, a series of storms swept the North Atlantic, generating some of the highest waves ever recorded in Western Europe with exceptionally long wave periods. The south-west coasts of the UK were heavily impacted by these storms, including Lyme Bay, an area which includes the UK's first large MPA designated in 2008 to exclude towed fishing gear from a 206 km2 area in order to protect high-biodiversity reef systems (including species like Pink Sea Fans and Ross Coral that provide habitat for many different species such as young fishes and scallops). Prior to this designation, smaller voluntary closures existed and subsequently in 2012 the MPA was enlarged when it became a Special Area of Conservation. Since 2008 the seabed has been monitored to assess its recovery, providing a unique baseline data set. We therefore have a range of times since protection, plus areas still fished, from which we have a very good understanding of the seabed animals in order to explore how the major natural disturbance caused by the unparalleled storm activity has affected the seabed. Using a towed underwater flying HD video camera along 200 m transects, we will survey 60 sites across four different levels of MPA protection, using locations that have been monitored over the previous 5 years to allow pre-storm comparison. We will analyse the videos for the whole transect to record the number of important functional group indicator organisms present and also a more detailed analysis of 30 frame grabs per transect; indicator species will also be measured to see any change in size over time. From this analysis we will be able to assess the functional diversity of all these sites after the storm damage and compare it with pre-storm surveys, thus assessing whether sites that have been protected longer, and with higher overall diversity, are more resilient to this major natural disturbance. The results will be important for aiding our understanding of how such seabed communities are impacted by natural disturbance, how resilient these communities are and how much difference protection within a MPA makes to boosting this resilience. As this has consequences for marine conservation, management and fisheries policy, the results are of great value for organisations such as Natural England, local Fisheries Associations and conservation charities who are partners in this project.

Vision: To determine novel and policy relevant pluralistic values for marine biodiversity and apply these values to co-develop green investment options, leading to a transformative shift in our understanding and utilisation of the economics of biodiversity. There have been significant developments in understanding how economies are embedded in nature and how biodiversity can be integrated into economic models and decision making. This has included growth in environmental valuation, ecosystem service assessments, natural capital approaches, and green investments. Despite these advances biodiversity is only sporadically integrated into decision making and remains external to our economic systems. The result is continuing biodiversity loss with negative implications for our society, economy, and fundamental wellbeing. Key challenges include: i. a nascent understanding of how biodiversity provides benefits resulting in a lack of decision grade data; ii. hesitance of users to apply values due to low confidence, poor understanding, and a negligible definition of the beneficiaries; iii. uncertainty regarding routes of green investment. To address these interconnected challenges ValMaB-DM brings together expertise in marine ecology, human geography, environmental and ecological economics, governance, and finance. The team includes academics, consultancies, and NGOs coupled with an extensive partner network of government, industry and commerce representatives. To drive a meaningful shift in the understanding and utilisation of the economics of biodiversity our partners highlighted a need for state-of-the-art theoretical development to be coupled with practicable representations. As such ValMaB-DM takes a twin track approach. One track will develop innovative, internationally applicable approaches whilst a parallel track will ground the research in key coastal habitats identified as priorities for net-biodiversity gain at the Solent and the Moray Firth, showcasing potential ecological, social, economic, and financial benefits. To address a critical evidence gap and inform the net zero agenda we will focus on the regulating services: bioremediation of waste and carbon sequestration. To tackle the stated challenges ValMaB-DM will first substantiate the interlinkages between marine biodiversity and carbon sequestration and bioremediation through the combination of new and existing data to assess how the condition of biodiversity affects the quantity, quality, and resilience of the services. Collaborating with international expertise we will develop consensus on scaling these findings from local to national and generic. Building on current understanding robust, generically applicable, monetary valuations of carbon sequestration and bioremediation will be further developed and applied to support natural capital accounting frameworks, and also coupled with novel ecological understanding at the case studies. As singular monetary valuations may not align with community aspirations participatory mapping initiatives will be advanced and deployed to engage real world communities in mapping the social values and trade-offs associated with biodiversity and Natural Capital resources. The ecological, monetary, and social values of biodiversity will be connected to decision-making through the co-design and implementation of green investment to maintain and enhance coastal habitats. Communication and capacity building are at the heart of ValMaB-DM. Strategic stakeholder engagement will be choreographed through the co-development of research, stakeholder mapping, the Programme Steering Group, and sharing of outcomes (e.g. policy briefs, trade shows, social media). We will also run a training programme for practitioners, collaborators and external stakeholders, enabled by Natural Resources Wales and the Coastal Partnership Network, and develop of an MSc course module and capitalise on links to the SuMMeR Centre for Doctoral Training