Reefballing
I was just browsing around the web and came across the website for an organization called Reef Ball.
They purport to make artificial reefs out of marine friendly concrete to "restore ailing coral reefs and to create new fishing and scuba diving sites". There is a description of their reef balls here.
So my question is, what happens when the next big storm comes along and starts pushing your reef balls around, destroying any healthy reef and other habitats that might happen to be nearby.
A professor in a human dimensions course once told the story of these giant concrete structures, shaped sort of like jacks from the kids game, that were deployed somewhere in the Pacific (I can't remember where) as surf breaks in an attempt to stop coastal erosion. A typhoon comes along and starts moving these structures around and completely destroys the local coral reefs.
Nice work!
As poorly as we understand coastal processes, it is amazing the lengths we will go to to prevent coastal erosion and protect all of our nice hotels and wealthy landowners, with little or no thought to the long term implications of our actions. Something as simple as beach renourishment can have devastating impacts on everything from the aesthetic quality of the beach to sea turtle nesting. The beaches at Bald Head Island are a perfect example. Before a beach renourishment project a couple of years ago there was nice soft sand up and down the beach. They have now dredged up a bunch of shell hash and sharp oyster shells on the beach, making it much less enjoyable. I'm guessing the sand is more compacted as well, which may make it more difficult for sea turtles to nest there. To top it off sections of the beach have already eroded away beyond where they were before the renourishment project and the houses they were trying to protect are falling into the water. The answer to this of course is to fill giant plastic bags with sand and line your beach with them!
Oops, went off on a bit of a tangent there...
bye
| Permalink
| 
Save This Page
|
Comments
My guess is that A) Somebody wants to make some cash by appealing to people concerned about reef deterioration, or, B) They think that they might actually be doing some good.
It seems they were concerned about damaging natural reefs, and did some testing in wind tunnels and wave tanks...Of course, you never really know until a hurricane whips up and knocks things all willy-nilly.
Posted by: Chris | October 3, 2003 05:58 AM
what a tragedy when stupid humans try to fix anything. bathtub beach is my favorite beach in the world. i hope they don't try to save it for us. i have noticed over the years that the beach "gets smaller" in the winter. one time there were stumps and roots of long ago trees that were exposed from "erosion". and then it seems as though the sands were washed back....or brought in by the truckload. do you know anything about this?
Posted by: Karen | April 6, 2004 02:06 AM
I am the designer of Reef Balls and I can tell you we took great pains to design an artificial reef structure that would not move in storms. Over 1/2 million Reef Balls have been deployed in 48 countries in over 4,000 projects including several that have sustained direct hits of hurricanes without a single Reef Ball ever moving. Chris's comment B) was correct, we know we are doing good (and we are not making money out of it as we are a public non-profit foundation). We do agree that moving artificial reefs have caused damage and that is one reason we developed Reef Balls to provide alternatives to ships, trash, tires, construction waste and other items that have been used as artificial reefs and have been documented to move and cause problems. Hope this helps clear up some thoughts.
-Todd Barber, Chairman, Reef Ball Foundation, Inc.
Posted by: Todd Barber | August 27, 2004 12:55 PM