Article by Capt. Monty Hawkins
Ocean City Reef Foundation
(Part II)
Small-scale & low-budget; back in the early days, the Ocean City Reef Foundation was basically looking for scrap, looking for ways government or corporations can save money by reefing material rather than scraping or landfilling.
When we recycle, coral grows. Flip-flops for safety gear and wages that top-out well below fifty cents an hour, foreign ship-breaking (recycling in its most grand scale) has been called “hell on earth.” When the world first became aware most ship-breaking was only being made profitable by child & near-slave labor in Bangladesh, there was suddenly greater interest in reefing Uncle Sam’s ships rather than scraping them for steel, especially after Congress made it illegal to send U.S. flagged vessels to slave labor yards.
The uptick in ship availability was short lived. Ship breakers on the West Coast put an incredible effort into lobbying for mandatory U.S. based ship-breaking. By posing as “concerned environmentalists”, now taxpayers have to pay U.S. wages for something only made profitable by slave-labor. We may not sensibly recycle our ships as reefs because lobbying efforts bore down on EPA regulations to the point where cleaning a ship for a reef project is far too expensive for all but the biggest programs.
Just a glimpse of the horrors of WWII were seen right off our coast when the “San Gill”, “Atwater”, “Moonstone” and others were sunk by German U-Boats. Those shipwrecks, and more-recent tragedies such as the “Marine Electric” and “Bow Mariner”, serve today as unbelievable reef oases’ on our near-barren sea floor. Some of these ships were lost so swiftly there was no time for their crews to even abandon ship. Among any of our war relics and accidental ship sinkings, there was never opportunity to spend multi-multi millions on cleaning.
A program of sensible ship cleaning followed by live-fire target practice for our armed forces could blossom into unbelievable new biological production resulting in new fish production. While the value of recycled steel does offset wages paid for U.S. ship-breaking, it’s only a tiny amount. No consideration has truly been given to what increases in marine productivity might offer the states and their waterfront communities compared to money directly lost recycling steel while paying U.S. wages and following U.S. safety regulations.
Every study to date has found enormous bio-economic benefit from reef building. For now, however, reef building with ships is out of the question in the Mid-Atlantic given today’s EPA regulations.
Well, if sinking ships as artificial reef is out, what’s left?
Concrete & rocks!
We think of shipwrecks as the ultimate in artificial reef because they are what survived the rise of industrial fishing. When natural reef was being lost in square mile sections to stern-towed commercial gears in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, the discovery of more and more shipwrecks in that same period made overall landings of reef fish appear steady.
Incredibly robust and productive, a large shipwreck is capable of the same biological production as a far-larger footprint of sandstone or hardened clay natural reef habitat. This is because natural reef bottoms may only emerge a few inches from the seabed. Since a reef’s productivity or value as habitat, would best be assessed in cubic measur (a measure that includes UP and not just flat square footage), the distance a shipwreck juts upward is as important or more important than the flat seabed measure in square yards.
Just as we can mimic a natural reef’s production with artificially sited natural rock or man-made material, so too is the possibility of greatly enhanced reef production from within a small footprint not just found in shipwrecks.
Numerous scientific assessments have shown pre-cast concrete products: pipe, junction boxes, spillways and manholes, to offer an environmentally benign and splendidly productive method of reef construction. North Carolina, in fact, has long had a policy of concrete-only for any man-made reef materials.
Reef substrate is the only part that’s “artificial” in artificial reef. All the growth and fish are natural with their colonization and population increase quite nearly unstoppable.
As we demonstrated with the “Iron Lady's” pre-cast concrete reef deployments in April 2015, it is possible to create wreck-like elevated reef by simply using a two-anchor set as is common in some of the recreational reef fisheries and letting the reef building boat settle before unloading substrate. You can believe that sitting 100 tons or more of pre-cast concrete on a single specific point will create elevated reef. As pieces mound-up during deployment, some roll off and broaden a reef's footprint. During the first few major storm events, the height of the mound will lessen as well.
The Ocean City Reef Foundation has had to learn how to build productive reef on a budget. While mounding is a new method that we’re excited to try, with the exception of the partially state-sponsored subway car program, we’ve traditionally built small reefs as funding became available and then tied several reef sets together over time with more and more material to create larger reefs.
For instance, on our very first experimental deployment, with approximately 60 tons of concrete pipe aboard the “Iron Lady”, we set several marker buoys around a series of brick kilns donated by Chestertown Brick in the early 2000’s. These kiln units, while not terribly large, were astoundingly robust. Their task, after all, had been to carry brick along a rail track through the company’s kilns.
We chose an area with about 25 kilns loosely deployed in piles and added the entirety of the “Iron Lady’s” cargo to that existing reef. We call this particular reef-set the George Purnell Family Reef. It should rapidly become far more productive.
Also at Purnell’s Reef, we sited two large mounds of pre-cast concrete. Both of these mammoth piles are sure to become tog fishing favorites.
The “Iron Lady” also built fish habitat at Kelly’s Reef, just below the Little Gull Shoal buoy. A barge on the south end, part of Mumford Steel and Mid-Atlantic Marine’s reefing donations, was targeted with over 40 small and medium concrete pipes. The north end of the Ben Sykes Reef Group was also given a healthy dose of concrete. A new, unnamed reef lies just inshore. Already begun with Parkside High School welding class units and numerous OCRF small barge deployments, the “Iron Lady” dropped 3 pipe bundles in the midst of this budding reef.
Lastly, there was also a double-anchor set mounded reef built at Kelly’s Reef.
We anticipate tautog to flourish along with all of our other reef species at these nearshore sites.
Offshore a bit further at the Isle of Wight Reef Site, now renamed "Sue Foster’s Reef," we deployed several hundred tons of pre-cast concrete at Lindsey Power’s Reef, which we’d begun several years ago, and also at the brand new concrete mound named in Sue’s honor. Perhaps we’ll call this spot “Drifting Easy” after Sue’s long-time Coastal Fisherman column; but it wouldn’t be advisable to actually drift over this spot, at least not with Granddad’s favorite sinkers..
Finally, as of April 26th, the “Iron Lady” had also made 5 fully-loaded runs to the Bass Grounds. Already begun last year, the Brian Sauerzopf Memorial Reef Group is a loose collection of 11 NYCTA subway cars with a concrete core. The concrete core part has grown dramatically.
Then there is the brand new Lucas Alexander Reef. Sited in just 41 feet of water in the southeast section of the Bass Grounds, the mound almost reaches our 27-foot minimum clearance requirement. Sure to be popular with free divers and beginning scuba enthusiasts, reef fishers may have to wait in line.
And finally in this series of recent reef deployments, we finished Capt. Bob Gowar’s Reef. Consisting of three full loads and part of another, Capt. Bob’s will remain a signature reef for many decades. In fact, I anticipate one mound in particular, consisting of close to 50 “tog house” units, will become a model for engineering reef habitat to maximize a fish species' production. I’ll let readers guess which species.
Surely the best of our reef building lies ahead, but the Ocean City Reef Foundation has made a substantial contribution to Maryland’s coastal fish habitat this spring. Consider that from corner to corner, the Bass Grounds Reef is nearly 4 miles long. If we created a reef of boulder and concrete that full length and several hundred yards wide, we’d still have a fantastic amount of reef left over to build both there and at all our other sites.
We can only continue a process of habitat improvement begun over 50 years ago. I doubt any generation will ever stand back, take their gloves and hardhat off and say, “We’re Done.”
If you’d care to help, we could use it.
Capt. Monty Hawkins is Captain of the headboat, “Morning Star” and President of the Ocean City Reef Foundation.
