Artificial Reefs Support East End Marine Life

Mention the word “reef” and the mind quickly goes to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the islands of Hawaii, or one of the many tropical getaways in the Caribbean. But not all reefs are tropical in nature. Many reefs thrive in cold water environments, too.

In fact, reefs can be found in the waters surrounding Long Island.

As a young angler, I would dream for hours about what the shipwreck I had recently been fishing on looked like. I would draw dioramas illustrating what I thought it was made of, what creatures inhabited it, and where they would hide to avoid my hooks.

Fast-forward many years later, and I am now fortunate enough to dive these artificial structures and see their secrets firsthand.

What exactly is a reef? A reef is a hard structure that is located along the bottom of a bay, sound, lagoon or ocean that provides habitat for a wide variety of organisms.

The most recognized type of reef is a coral reef, which is made up of hundreds of thousands of individual coral polyps. As each polyp grows, they build upon one another, and over a period of hundreds of years they create an enormous living structure. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the largest of its kind. It is so massive that it can be seen from space.

Another type of reef where the base structure was created by living organisms is an oyster reef. When oysters reproduce, their larvae drift in the water column as plankton for two to three weeks before settling on a hard substrate. Any hard base will suffice, but they often settle on existing oysters, causing the size of the reef to continually expand.

Some reefs start with a non-living base, such as a rock outcropping or ridge. This is the kind of natural reef that can be found in the waters of Long Island. Locations such as Montauk, Gardners Bay and the Long Island Sound are full of glacial erratics (rocks and boulders) that provide an excellent base for reef creation. Seaweeds, barnacles, mussels, encrusting organisms such as sponges, tunicates, hydrozoans, etc., need hard structures for attachment points. Being that a majority of the seafloor consists of soft, dynamic substrates (i.e. sand and silt), hard, stable substrates are in limited supply and are highly sought after by these organisms.

Due to Long Island’s glacial formation, most of Long Island’s south shore consists of sandy substrates that are not suitable for reef creation. Even though conditions are not ideal, reefs are still prevalent in this region of the island.

Each of the south shore inlets has been lined with giant boulders in an attempt to keep the inlets open and navigable. As an unintended consequence, these rocks are a welcome oasis in an otherwise structureless environment and are quickly colonized by marine organisms. This reef ecosystem, with a base structure that was placed by people, is referred to as an artificial reef. Bridges, breakwaters, docks and piers are structures that also serve as artificial reefs and attract a plethora of marine life.

Not all artificial reefs are the result of unintended consequences. Many are created on purpose, as a way to enhance habitat for a wide range of marine organisms.

In New York, the first documented artificial reef was built in the Great South Bay in the 1920s. In 1962, the New York State Artificial Reef Program was officially established, and in 1993 the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation developed a management plan. Currently, the state manages 12 artificial reefs; two in the Long Island Sound, two in the Great South Bay, and eight in the Atlantic Ocean.

In 2018, New York’s artificial reef program began its largest expansion to date by using recycled materials from infrastructure construction projects of the New York State Canal Corporation, New York State Thruway Authority, New York State Department of Transportation, the New York Power Authority, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The reef program is not a way for these municipalities to dispose of construction waste. All materials added to a reef must be thoroughly cleaned and inspected to make sure they will not cause any harm to the environment. Some of the “retired” infrastructure has consisted of concrete pipes, road deck panels, steel I-beams and steel trusses from the old Tappan Zee Bridge. Decommissioned vessels such as barges, tugboats and commercial fishing vessels also have been deployed on the reefs. In these cases, the U.S. Coast Guard inspects each vessel before they are sunk to ensure that they do not contain fuel or other potentially harmful products.

After all the material is properly cleaned, it is not simply dumped in a giant pile on the seafloor. Much thought and consideration goes into the proper placement of each piece to create the most diverse marine habitat possible that will be utilized by a wide variety of marine organisms. To accomplish this, the DEC has adopted the “patch reef” system. In this method, material is spread over a large area, leaving natural sandy bottom habitats in between the reef piles. This creates a mixed habitat that will increase the diversity of the marine life using the reef.

Surprisingly, within days of the materials hitting the bottom, the reef starts to come alive. Small schooling fish use this newfound structure to seek shelter from the endless number of predators that patrol the vast open ocean. After a couple of months, mussels, sea anemones, sponges, northern stony corals, bryozoans and other encrusting invertebrates begin to cover the entire reef. As they spread, crabs, lobsters and sea stars arrive to feed upon them. These new arrivals then attract fish such as black sea bass, blackfish, porgies and fluke.

With an abundance of fish inhabiting the reef, larger predatory fish such as striped bass, bluefish, tuna and even sharks make the reef their feeding ground. And, of course, all this marine life attracts people. Not only are these reefs productive for fishing, they are also popular places to SCUBA dive.

Part of the DEC’s management plan is to monitor the evolution of each of the reef locations to see what works and what does not. Brittney Scannell, a Ph.D. candidate at Stony Brook University, is looking to understand the role artificial reefs play as fish habitat here on Long Island. She is looking at how different species use the structures for shelter, foraging and as “pit stops” as fish move between the ocean, bays and along the south shore.

She is attempting to answer these questions by acoustic tagging several fish species that inhabit the reefs. Acoustic tags emit a low-frequency sound that is detected by listening devices known as receivers. This type of tagging technique is commonly used by scientists throughout the world to track not only fish but sea turtles, seals and other marine life.

Brittney has attached receivers on the various artificial reefs of the south shore to not only track the fish she has tagged but to listen for tags that were placed by other researchers. She has already heard from tagged horseshoe crabs, striped bass, sturgeon, cobia, bluefin tuna, skates, thresher sharks, sandbar sharks, sand tiger sharks, and even white sharks!

In addition to marine biologists, DEC is looking to citizen scientists to help monitor these reefs. Via a digital survey, users of the reef can upload pictures of fish and other wildlife that they encounter while spending time on an artificial reef. By collecting all this data, the DEC can make more informed decisions when adding to or creating new reefs.

Artificial reefs are not only created to provide habitat, but some are also being used as tools to help mitigate environmental issues that we are seeing in marine ecosystems.

The Shinnecock Bay Restoration Program (shinnecockbay.org) at Stony Brook University has been deploying artificial oyster reefs in Shinnecock Bay to combat harmful algal blooms, or HABs. HABs are caused by an excess of nutrients in the water, which in turn fuels phytoplankton to bloom out of control.

Feeding on phytoplankton, one adult oyster is capable of filtering 50 gallons of water per day. Multiply that number by millions of oysters, and these reefs could play a crucial part in keeping HABs in check. These reefs also serve as broodstock, helping to repopulate the surrounding area with oysters that will aid in further filtration, create habitat for other organisms, and provide oysters for harvest.

Whether an artificial reef is deployed to create new habitat or to tackle poor water quality issues, they contribute to the well-being of our marine environment. Beyond that, they also benefit the local economy by creating places for people to recreate.

If you enjoy fishing, SCUBA diving, or enjoy viewing wildlife, be sure to visit your local artificial reef and experience all that they have to offer.

With a degree in marine biology from LIU/Southampton, Chris Paparo is the manager of Stony Brook University’s Marine Sciences Center. Additionally, he is an award-winning member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America and the NYS Outdoor Writers Association. You can follow Paparo on social media at @fishguyphotos.