What do chunks of an old bridge, a shrimp boat, a hopper car from a train, railroad ties and sewer culverts all have in common? They all can be found as artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico. The newest is Kimberly's Reef, 7.5 miles from the Southwest Florida coastline and created by The Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University.
Of the 280 official artificial reefs off the coast of Charlotte, Lee, and Collier counties, most were dropped into the water to create habitat to increase marine life in that area.
While the same goes for Kimberly's Reef, the placement and design of the reef complex has always been a little more intentional.
"This was going to be an underwater research platform for FGCU and an underwater classroom for the community," said Helen Noble, Outreach Coordinator for the FGCU Vester Field Station. "We knew that we wanted the whole university to participate on an interdisciplinary level. We wanted the business school, all the sciences to come into this reef project. We wanted the arts and then certainly all things marine, all things water. So, with that in mind, we got started on this research artificial reef project."
Dr. Mike Parsons, professor of Marine Science at FGCU, started planning the reef in 2017. Before anything could be put in the water, he had to find a location and get a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps of Engineers also requires that reef material be stable, durable, and last through at least 25 years’ worth of storms.
"We had some ideas based on past reef deployments in Lee County," said Parsons. "We started gathering some cement concrete pilings and beams that we could use to make these structures. But then it soon became obvious that these probably wouldn't hold up to wave energy and hurricanes."
Funding and COVID-19 put the project briefly on hold. Then, in 2021 a second permit for the reef was secured. This time, parameters from the Army Corps of Engineers had changed. Noble and Parsons went back to work on the design.
"What had changed in this permitting was that now these five and a half foot large openings were required in any reefs that were being deployed for sea turtles to be able to swim through them, which is wonderful," said Noble. "And it had to be something that was pretty substantial."
"That's when we started trying to find a supplier of culverts because, you know, they're giant cement boxes, basically. And so they'll be able to hold up to wave action," said Parsons.
"We had a clean slate. So, I Googled "infrastructure" one day and Oldcastle Infrastructure, their parent company came up and just looking at this was awesome with the types of projects that they have just created all over the world," said Noble. "It just happened that Cape Coral came up as the first precast company that they had in the state."
Noble reached out to the company to see if they could do a site visit. Parsons and Noble were in for a surprise.
"Oldcastle is a company that has been around since the early seventies. We build infrastructure, meaning underground municipal utilities. We do bridge sections. We do grease traps, sewer manholes, all that type of product. This plant is one of four that's in the state of Florida." Tony Scarano is the plant manager at Oldcastle in Cape Coral. "We're glad to help out in this project for Kimberly's Reef."
When Noble and Parsons visited the lot, they were shown 19 four-sided box cement culverts that were left over from another project.
"The original project was for storm water in the city of Miami, around the old Jackie Gleason Theater," said Scarano. "The engineers overestimated the measurement. So when they came up too much, we had already had it made."
Noble and Parsons were told that the culverts were slated for destruction. Instead, Oldcastle donated them for the reef.
"Typically, they would be broken, taken to a crushing operation and made back in the road base. You know, nothing's ever wasted," said Scarano. "At least this is something you can see, something you can touch, something for the future."
"Each piece is eight by five. And when I say eight by five, that's the inside diameter of it. And that's how we measure stuff," Scarano continued. "Each piece weighs about 20,000 pounds. Obviously all made out of precast concrete and reinforced with rebar. Everything has rebar inside it."
"Suddenly we had a whole new vision. We had a whole new expectation of what these 11 acres on the bottom of the Gulf could look like," Noble said of the design.
For the team at FGCU, the cement culverts were ideal for a long-term marine habitat like Kimberly’s Reef. The rectangular structures met the required five-foot opening and each weighed 20,000 pounds, presumably enough to withstand hurricanes. The new design had three pairs of culverts spaced 300 feet apart and facing in various directions for experimentation.
The reef team now had the necessary permits, the design, and the box culverts. The next step was getting the culverts into the Gulf of Mexico. The plan was to deploy them in the fall of 2022. Nature had other plans.
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