Reef balls are turning an ocean desert in N.L. into a thriving ecosystem

For millennia, seeing the bottom of the ocean floor was reserved for deepsea divers. But that, much like the ocean itself, has changed. 

Through an array of cameras, the majesty of the deepsea floor has been brought to life on screens — but so has the polar opposite of a thriving seabed: barren, grey dead zones. It’s a testament to the damage caused to marine ecosystems.

But a team of ocean scientists in Newfoundland and Labrador are turning one ocean dead zone into a thriving marine ecosystem. 

“This is really cool because we get to fix a part of the ocean,” Mark Santos, a fisheries technologist with the Marine Institute’s Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Resources.

A manufactured reef made of concrete structures brings new life into Placentia Bay

A year ago, Santos and a team at The Launch, Marine Institute’s coastal state-of-art lab in Holyrood, launched 285 cement reef balls into the bay. The structures are full of nooks and crannies and made from a type of cement that allows for biofouling, a natural process that invites algae growth working with sunbeams to photosynthesis marine snow into life.

The Marine Institute partnered with a major oil company and the government to restore a seafloor zone in Placentia Bay’s Fox Harbour, which is adjacent to a dredging site.

“It was barren,” said Santos, who compared the area to a desert. “It was a mega project in the area, they had to remove some of the sediment in the area and this is a remediation project, we had an opportunity to rebuild.”

The team placed an underwater camera in the area to monitor the balls and watched as the cement became carpeted in algae and slowly, more and more marine life settled into the structures to call them home.

“If you look at the video you’ll see lobsters sticking out of these little slots and their little claws sticking out,” he said.

Through an underwater camera, the artificial marine habitat can be watched through SmartAtlantic.ca.

“We actually get to show that to everybody, to say look, we are doing something good. There’s a new habitat growing here,” said Bethany Randell, a project engineer with the Marine Institute’s Centre for Applied Ocean Technology.

Randell added this is what she got into the ocean science business for, a chance to fix some of the damaged ocean.

“If we just step away for a minute, nature will find a way.”

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Since the reef balls were put into place in the bay, Santos said lobsters have migrated there because the layered balls provide an excellent home for the borrowing crustaceans. 

The reef balls have a predicted lifespan of 500 years, and while this project has a nine-year span, Santos said he plans to keep the camera down there as long as possible. 

“Maybe it would be great to put them in other places too,” added Randell, who has big conservation ideas and started off wanting to be a marine biologist.

Happy to see her ocean saving dreams reflected in this project, like Santos she hopes to keep the balls rolling.

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