The Coastal Conservation of Maryland (CCA) began its Living Reef Action Campaign in 2015 with three goals in mind: habitat creation and restoration, educational outreach and community engagement, and advancing the science of habitat restoration through scientific studies. You may have seen CCA staff at a recent boat show, where they often host reef ball building demos, and wondered what it’s all about?
Well, a reef ball is a specially designed three-dimensional concrete structure. Concrete is poured into a mold and once it is set, the reef ball is removed, and its rough surface is now ideal for the attachment of numerous organisms.
Many of the reef balls built as part of the Living Reef Action Campaign make a trip into a setting tank to allow hatchery reared oysters to attach to the concrete. This allows each reef ball to enter the water as an already living reef. Depending on which model of reef ball is used, approximately 900-1500 spat have been attached to a single reef ball before deployment.
Once reef balls are set with spat, they are immediately loaded onto the deck of a large boat or barge and deployed in the early morning hours to avoid loss of the juvenile oysters from overheating or drying out.
Deployment sites are carefully selected and permitted or approved as artificial reef sites. The team at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation uses a special cable which releases the reef balls once they are gently placed on the Bay bottom. In shallow water, volunteers float reef balls into position using inflated rubber bladders and by wading along the reef.
Deployed reef balls instantly provide new structure for fish and other organisms to call home. While fish are often transient occupants of a reef, a Chesapeake Reef Ball can quickly become a permanent home for filter feeders like anemones, mussels, sea squirts, and more. While oysters are always showcased as the Bay’s leading filter feeder, the true value of a reef is in the many organisms which work together to provide many ecosystem services. Oyster reefs are truly the foundation of all life in the Bay.
Throughout the year, CCA hosts reef ball build events at various schools in the region, providing a unique perspective for students, teachers, and parents into the importance of the oyster in the regional ecosystem. You can learn more about these events, sign up to volunteer with CCA, or find a list of artificial reefs around the Bay, visit ccamd.org. And if you want to see just how productive these artificial reefs really are, check out this FishTalk video.