Ocean Liner SS United States Will Become An Artificial Reef

FLORA LICHTMAN: This week, after a notable career, the SS United States, a 1950s ocean liner, is taking her sunset cruise. Like many retirees, the ship is heading south, from Philadelphia to Florida, where she’ll be reinventing herself. In this new chapter, the SS United States won’t be a ship at all. She’s taking up a new vocation at the bottom of the sea. The ship will be sunk and turned into an artificial reef, hopefully providing a new home for marine life.

So how do these artificial reefs work? Are ships good candidates for them? What are the risks? Joining me now to dive into the science of artificial reefs is Scott Jackson. Scott has served Northwest Florida with the University of Florida’s Sea Grant Extension since 2000. As Bay County extension director, and as a regional specialized agent, he focuses on artificial reefs, fisheries, and coastal resiliency. Scott, welcome to Science Friday.

SCOTT JACKSON: It’s great to be here. Thank you for having me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What is an artificial reef?

SCOTT JACKSON: Artificial reefs are manmade materials that we place in the ocean to create hard substrate. They mimic some of the natural things that we find, like a Northwest Florida limestone, but as you go further south, some of the coral reefs, those will be some good things that we’re trying to mimic.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What is their purpose?

SCOTT JACKSON: The purpose is to create additional places for marine habitat to develop and grow. They also provide really great places for people to fish and dive. And so it benefits both the economy and also our ecology.

FLORA LICHTMAN: When did artificial reefs become a thing? Like when did we first start experimenting with them?

SCOTT JACKSON: It’s kind of an interesting story. Some of the first artificial reefs were shipwrecks. And so shipwrecks kind of gave a little clue that we might be able to put down these materials on purpose, and not just wait for Mother Nature to have an impact that resulted in some type of tragedy or damage so that we could actually see some of the same things that we saw from these shipwrecks. And so in the late 1800s, I believe, it was South Carolina that started putting down log huts and some other things, but they quickly deteriorated.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The original artificial reef was a log hut. OK.

SCOTT JACKSON: I would say after a shipwreck, then we started to look toward things that we could make. And so logs and timber are readily available. And so that was what some of the first artificial reefs were made out of. They just don’t have the longevity or the durability that we need for a really successful reef.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I understand that Florida has really pioneered artificial reefs. How many do you have?

SCOTT JACKSON: Right now, Florida Fish and Wildlife estimates over 4,300. Where I live in Panama City and Bay County, we have over 700 spots that we have curated and put down. We continue to add to those numbers on a daily basis across the state of Florida. But we also work to monitor and keep up with what is going on with the reefs that we put down, and learn from those monitoring trips and just make things continually better.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So where is the SS United States heading, exactly?

SCOTT JACKSON: It’s about 20 nautical miles or so offshore, and some of that may vary over time as they work with regulators and finally come to a spot. But ideally, it would be available to a number of resource and recreational users. It is going to be more of a– I think, in this case, an economic boost is what we’re looking at. We try to prioritize and look at different purposes for artificial reefs, and sometimes we prioritize the economy over actually creating marine habitat, although they do both.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Well, what about the marine habitat version? What’s the sort of ideal for a marine habitat artificial reef?

SCOTT JACKSON: The marine habitat artificial reef, which we have studied over decades now and in Florida, with help from researchers, is patch reefs. It’s smaller, usually made out of concrete materials that kind of mimics some of the limestone or some of the corals that we might see that are easily populated by encrusting or fouling organisms, like shellfish, barnacles, tunicates, and some other things that start the parade that we see as the artificial reef develops.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What do you mean “the parade”? Tell me about it.

SCOTT JACKSON: So the parade kind of starts as soon as you put it down, with usually bait fish that start to adopt this new substrate that’s been added to the sandy bottom in our area in Northwest Florida, anyway. We start to see after the bait fish show up, some of the predatory fish show up, too, because the artificial reef habitat is providing homes for predators to ambush from, but it’s also providing protection for these small fish. So it just allows for everything to grow and take care of everything. And what we have seen over time is the presence of invasive species, too.

And so sometimes, some of the first fish that we see on our artificial reef are lionfish. And so over the years that we’ve been putting out reefs, we’ve seen an increased number of lionfish. And now we actually see the number of lionfish start to stabilize and, in some cases, be reduced. And that can be attributed just to general ecology, as things adapt to the naturalization of lionfish. But we also have a robust group of people that usually are diving that go out and target lionfish. In fact, you can go on a dive trip and actually go and get lionfish, and they’re very tasty and very good to eat.

FLORA LICHTMAN: When you’re doing this for marine life, do you need to think about where you’re putting it? Like, are you creating a reef where there was no reef before?

SCOTT JACKSON: In Northwest Florida, the predominant sediment on the bottom is usually unconsolidated sand, and just like you see on the beach, you see under the water throughout our area. Some have called it a desert. I think it’s interrupted more by limestone ledges that come and go with storms and tides and such, and we have more of them that we thought. But we try to purposefully put these down in areas that we want to increase that hard substrate and increase the productivity with the prize fish and marine life that we want to either go visit and see or eat or provide additional resources back to our coastal environment.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, but is it sort of biologically complicated to create a structure where naturally, there was no structure? Are people worried about that, upsetting the ecosystem in some way?

SCOTT JACKSON: First of all, Mother Nature is very quick to adopt such things. Even just some of the things that we would consider like bottles or trash or marine debris, which we don’t want to see in the ocean, quickly gets adopted and taken care of by Mother Nature with the things that start to form on that. We’re just doing more of a purposeful seeding of life to make sure that there are no things that we would consider trash or pollutants to try to create that hard substrate so that things can start to grow and start that chain that we talked about earlier.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So how do you make sure that there are no toxic materials or chemicals that would end up polluting the water?

SCOTT JACKSON: There’s a prescribed cleaning process that’s set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency. We also have local regulators in our state offices here that work with the Department of Environmental Protection, also with Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, to help us make sure and ensure that we don’t have those types of things, like hydrocarbons, where we have oils, hydraulic fluids, diesel fuel, gasoline. Those are the ones that we most think of as far as potential pollutants.

But then there’s also things that we address with potential paint that peels. In some ways, that’s why we look at not only ships, which tend to be preferred by the public as far as artificial reefs, but as people that manage coastal waters and those types of things. Having something engineered specifically to be an artificial reef from the get-go is what we’re looking for. That helps us best because we can tailor that to specific species that we want to try to enhance.

We can put it in different locations for different purposes, whether that’s to address shoreline erosion in some cases, help us soften and increase the complexity of structures along seawalls that maybe have been there before, and kind of complement living shoreline projects near shore. And we can also do a number of different things offshore with these engineered reefs.

FLORA LICHTMAN: You can tailor them to the needs of the–

SCOTT JACKSON: Absolutely.

FLORA LICHTMAN: –of the ecosystem and the habitat. Have you visited any of these reefs? Like have you scuba dived to see them?

SCOTT JACKSON: Yeah, I don’t scuba dive. So I come at it from a different angle. And so a lot of things, what I do is fish on top. And we go out, and we’ll actually sample using hook and line for the types of things and activities that I participate in. Pull the fish up, measure, and then return those fish so that they can be caught by somebody else in the future. But we do look at the productivity– how many fish we catch. And then oftentimes, we’ll tag those fish.

FLORA LICHTMAN: We know corals are threatened by warming seas. Is there anything that we can do for corals themselves with artificial reefs?

SCOTT JACKSON: That is one of the benefits that has been studied over time with some other reefs that were placed in South Florida, and they were able to show that they were able to spare some of the pressure on the natural reefs and the coral reefs, as far as the number of visitors and those types of things. There is a large segment that enjoys visiting wrecks, and that can provide additional opportunities so that everybody’s not on the same precious coral all at the same time.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Oh, that’s fascinating. So you can divert traffic from coral reefs to these artificial reefs and ease some of the pressure on the natural habitats.

SCOTT JACKSON: Right. Those were some early studies that were done probably decades ago.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s about all the time we have for now. I’d like to thank my guest. Scott Jackson has served Northwest Florida with the University of Florida Sea Grant Extension since 2000. As Bay County extension director and a regionalized specialized agent, he focuses on artificial reefs, fisheries, and coastal resiliency. Scott, thanks for joining us.

SCOTT JACKSON: You’re welcome. Thank you so much.

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