NOAA Fisheries News Releases
NEWS RELEASE
May 10, 2006
Sheela McLean
(907) 586-7032
NOAA Fisheries and Partners Installing Artificial Reef Near Whittier
Today NOAA Fisheries experts and their partners began construction of Alaska’s first pre-planned and monitored artificial reef in Prince William Sound near Whittier. The project will test and document the effectiveness of concrete-based artificial reef structures as a habitat enhancement tool in Alaska.
“Coastal development will continue to result in incremental losses of valuable fish habitat in Alaska,” said Jon Kurland, NOAA Fisheries’ Assistant Regional Administrator for Habitat Conservation. “We need to develop reliable ways to offset the unavoidable loss of productive marine habitat. This project will test out a way to mitigate habitat loss, while also increasing opportunities for local dive groups and providing educational and research opportunities.”
“This will be the most northern placement of an artificial reef using these materials,” said Erika Ammann of NOAA’s Restoration Center. “We anticipate that these artificial reefs will be colonized more slowly than the well-studied artificial reefs to the south. It is important to understand the growth rate and species composition of algae, invertebrates and fish that may use the reef so we can determine the usefulness of these reefs as an enhancement tool for degraded or unproductive areas.”
A reef built of 90-each concrete balls and pyramids will be deployed in three paired patches on a declining slope (30 to 40 feet in depth) over mixed soft and hard sediment substrate, explained Brian Lance, also of NOAA Fisheries’ Habitat Conservation Division in Alaska. The concrete structures will lie on the bottom of Smitty’s Cover near Whittier. Both reef structure designs—ball-shaped and pyramid-shaped--have been used successfully in more southern waters, but have never been tested in Alaska.
The concrete structures are designed for optimal colonization by marine plants and animals and used worldwide, Lance explained. They have a pH similar to seawater (pH~8 versus pH~12 in regular concrete), that facilitates rapid colonization by marine algae. Pre-planned artificial reef designs mimic natural habitats, encouraging settlement by plants and benthic invertebrates, and providing both shelter and a forage base for fish.
Two years of fish sampling in neighboring Shotgun Cove by NOAA Fisheries and U.S. Fish and Wildlife researchers have shown the presence of salmon species, walleye pollock, Pacific tomcod, Pacific herring, white-spotted greenling, and starry flounder. Local diver and project volunteer Jerry Vandergriff has also observed many of these fish species in the general area of the reefs now under construction. Juvenile rockfish have inhabited artificial reefs in the Seattle area.
NOAA Fisheries was joined in the project by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Prince William Sound Science Center, the University of South Alabama’s Dauphin Island Sea Lab, and Alaska Marine Lines.
Alaska Marine Lines/Lynden Inc. is installing the spheres as mitigation for the recent expansion of their facility in Whittier, which required filling tidal waters. NOAA is installing the pyramids as a pilot project.
“Alaska Marine Lines has gone the extra mile,” said Lance. “They are enthusiastic about this project.”
The reefs will be monitored for five years. Divers will intensively monitor the reefs in the first two years in order to document colonization of the reefs. NOAA divers and Brad Reynolds, a graduate student at Dauphin Island Sea Lab and Mary Anne Bishop from the Prince William Sound Science Center are scheduled for monitoring the first couple years, starting in May and ending in September. This monitoring will include dive surveys, stationary underwater camera surveys, fish collection, and stomach content analysis to determine forage base.
A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Coastal Program grant with matching funds from the Prince William Sound Science Center will provide monitoring funds for the implementation phase, with NOAA continuing monitoring after implementation.
Project developers in Valdez, False Pass, Juneau, and Kodiak have shown interest in using artificial reefs for habitat restoration and mitigation, Kurland said.
NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) is dedicated to protecting and preserving our nation’s living marine resources through scientific research, management, enforcement, and the conservation of marine mammals and other protected marine species and their habitat. To learn more about NOAA Fisheries in Alaska, please visit our websites at www.fakr.noaa.gov and www.afsc.noaa.gov.