Article by Capt. Monty Hawkins
My friend Jimmy Jackson passed away in late April. A young man and among the best of men: I can not guess the depth of sorrow for those closest to him. I never knew a more talented nor gifted man; everything he worked on was made beautiful.
His family requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Ocean City Reef Foundation in his name.
In my darkest hour, Jimmy's knowledge of boats saved my business. I aim to see a great reef built in his honor.
When I was younger, working deck, I might only see 4 or 5 small boats reef fishing a year. Now I often see twice that many in a single day. The ocean is getting smaller & more crowded.
People who plainly see how well artificial reefs are working know that all it takes to make fish flourish is to build more reef.
Even though there were far fewer boats bottom fishing 30 some years ago, we would sometimes go to the African Queen and not be able to fish at all. We'd have to steam 7 more miles just because a dive boat or another fisher was already there.
Then it was just the site of a single shipwreck. Now it's a well built-out artificial reef site. Even if there were 10 boats there you could still easily get on the reef, the next boat as well.
Back then you could have fished every square inch of the Great Eastern Reef for months and not catch a sea bass. Now, with its well, grown-in reef substrates, this huge artificial reef site produces fish for thousands upon thousands of visitors each year. And the Twin Wrecks, just a mile inshore, are far more productive now than they were before the reef was built East Southeast of them.
Some say reef building aggregates fish for easier catch. Nonsense. Creating more habitat can not concentrate fish. It has to thin them out. It must. Were aggregation the goal, fishers would remove reef so that fish have even fewer places to shelter and spawn.
Instead, and in just a short time period, reef building, increasing real reef habitat, makes fishing far better. Fish aggregations on artificial reef are no more unnatural than their gatherings on natural reef. It is where they feed, shelter, grow and spawn.
There can, however, be a wholly unnatural depletion of habitat in which fish flourish when given some slight improvement.
The mussels, corals, crab, shrimp, squid and fish of a mature artificial reef are no more artificial than cicada, ants, birds, raccoon, opossum and deer in a large farm tract left untilled for a decade.
The only reason any sea bass, tog or triggerfish are now caught at the Bass Grounds is because of artificial reef efforts going back to 1969. The Bass Grounds were once a super huge natural sea whip field, an area of soft corals so big it was fished by boats even before the Inlet was cut. The area so big that party boats would spend the entire season there after the scup were caught-up off Fenwick. The Bass Grounds were so full of life that marlin fed there into the early 1960s & bluefish even longer. Then came the surfclamming boom and the habitat was almost completely lost, leaving enough natural reef there to equal a small wreck.
It took 6 years to permit that entire area for artificial reef. We now have 88 subway car reef units there. Surely the fish will thrive on these new reefs as they have on every thing else the Reef Foundation has sited and will site.
At the Jackspot in 2003 only one boat could fish. Now, thanks to the Susan Powers Reef, there's room for many.
At Russell's (Great Gull) - Kelly's (Little Gull) - Purnell's (just north of the inlet) no tog were ever caught, no triggers, no flounder, no sea bass, and certainly no spade fish. Today we have reefs there and catch fish there.
In every instance of reef construction I have seen fantastic fishing where there was none. In every instance, I have seen fish spawn where none would have. In every instance soft and hard corals have grown where once there was only sand. In every instance the tiniest juvenile fish have sheltered and fed, then grown to spawn themselves.
In no instance has artificial reef drained away life from any nearby remnants of our natural reef. No, those reefs improve as well.
The fish do not know what we have done to the ocean in just the last century; theirs is a natural response when we make restorations.
Please make a donation to the Jimmy Jackson Memorial Reef Fund. The beauty and productivity of our mid-Atlantic corals will serve his memory well.
Note: Contributions to the Jimmy Jackson Memorial Reef Fund can be mailed to the Ocean City Reef?Foundation, P.O. Box 1072, Ocean City, MD 21843.
