Designing meaningful reinstatement strategies for fauna is a much greater challenge. Damaged habitats may be protected and recovery of ecosystems may be enhanced, for example, by restricting access and human activity, by placing controls on fishing to reduce competition for a limited food source, as
is the case with sand eels and puffins, or by closing beaches used by turtles during the nesting season. In some cases, protection of a natural breeding population at a nearby, un-oiled site may be warranted, for example by predator control, to provide a reservoir from which re-colonisation of the damaged areas can occur. However, many complex biological, ecological and environmental factors are likely to govern the ability of adjacent populations to re-colonise a polluted area.
In reality, the complexity of the marine environment means that there are limits to the extent to which ecological damage can be repaired artificially. In most cases natural recovery is likely to be relatively rapid and will only rarely be outpaced by reinstatement measures.