By January 2022, Kimberly’s Reef was ready to become a reality in the Gulf of Mexico. The FGCU reef team had the permit and location from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Eighteen cement culverts were stacked and ready at the Oldcastle Infrastructure yard in Cape Coral. And Dr. Mike Parsons, Professor of Marine Science in the Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University and Director of FGCU's Vester Field Station, had a new layout for the 11-acre reef complex that was more suitable for scientific research.
"These 18 culverts will basically be deployed in units of three. So they'll be six units of three and we call them villages just to come up with some kind of catchy name," said Parsons. "Previous research found that the fish tend to separate one village from another. If you spread them out far enough each village can harbor more fish. If it was just one "city," there would actually be fewer fish."
Parsons said the design allowed for more rigorous research where one village could be used as a control group, while another village with similar parameters could be used for testing. This design required precision in placement under the water.
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So, how do you get 20,000-pound cement culverts from the Cape Coral cement yard to the Gulf of Mexico?
Enter Kelly Brothers, a family-owned marine construction company on San Carlos Island across the bay from Fort Myers Beach.
"Kelly Brothers is a marine construction company that was founded over 40 years ago by my father, Danny Kelly, and we are in the marine side of construction," said Dane Kelly, now president of the business. "(We do) anything from marinas, bridges, artificial reefs, water control structures, anything on or around the water that's construction related."
Kelly said he and his brother Travis have been in the business since day one.
"We kind of learn from the ground up, starting in the field and working our way up to learn how to run the cranes, the push boats, worked in the office, and just kind of kept moving up since the day we were born," said Kelly.
Dane and Travis, who now run the business, are big believers in ensuring the marine habitat in the Gulf stays healthy and fishy. They come from a long line of fishermen.
"Ever since I was a kid, if you found any new little spot, I mean, my grandfather used to drag a pipe behind the boat. If you hooked to something, you knew you could turn around and go fish. So over the years to know when you build something out there, anything that the counties build out there will attract fish, period."
In addition to the requisite enthusiasm, Kelly Brothers had the crane and barge to move the culverts out into the Gulf of Mexico, and the skilled scuba divers to place the culverts underwater. The plan was to deploy them in the fall of 2022. That was until Hurricane Ian.
The immense storm surge scoured the barrier islands of Southwest Florida, leaving what homes and businesses were still standing awash with mud, silt and debris.
"Hurricane Ian kicked our butts,' said Kelly. "This beach yard went under 12 to 14 feet of water. There was a shrimp boat sitting right here where it floated up. So, we would be about ten feet underwater where we're at right now. And some of our barges were pushed up on this bulkhead, even though they were spudded down. We were kind of hunkering down for wind, but the storm surge is what hurt us."
Debris from department stores on Fort Myers Beach was also strewn throughout their yard.
"We just went to work, started cleaning it up," recalled Kelly. "It was just dumpster after dumpster of debris."
Not only did the company lose some equipment from storm damage, what equipment they had was now pulled into service for recovery efforts up and down the coast.
"We were able to land some work of helping put in some of the bulkheads over at the Sanibel Causeway and pipe piles for some of the barges that they're going to be bringing in for some of the bigger companies that were working with FDOT (Florida Department of Transportation)," said Kelly. "So, we were helping Lee County locally. After that, we were working with different marinas in Estero Bay to help get them back operational."
Even if Kelly Brothers hadn't sustained damage, the Gulf of Mexico was not a safe place to be. A few FGCU scientists and students went out on a research vessel after the storm to check on some of their regularly monitored sites. They pulled water samples from the surface, and dived below to do surveys in the churned up water.
"Viz was terrible," said James Douglass, FGCU Associate Professor in the Department of Marine & Earth Sciences. "In fact, it was it was kind of scary diving, especially the first site that we dove, which was pretty near the Caloosahatchee. And it was so murky I could hardly see my hand in front of my face. And the sea was quite rough. I was worried I was going to knock my teeth out on the anchor chain. Going down the anchor line, it was just like descending into midnight blackness and the anchor chain was lurching up and down. But I felt some assurance when we finally got to the bottom and, you know, I could touch the ground."
The visibility below wasn't much better, Douglass said, but what he did see wasn't encouraging.
"What we saw was a lot like a bomb had gone off down there. You could see that there were signs of a huge physical disturbance. Some sites where the rock had been exposed and covered in life were now buried in sand and looked like a barren desert, whereas other sites had been scoured down to the seafloor and limestone was exposed where it had been covered in sand before."
As a benthic ecologist, Douglass studies life on the bottom of the gulf. He was keen to see what life remained after the storm.
"There were a few creatures still hanging on that had been firmly attached to the ground, but a lot of the life had been swept away or buried in a sort of a mud snowfall of silt. So, it was rough looking at what was down there," he said. "It'll be interesting to see how that recovers or further declines with some of the new disturbances in the Gulf."
On the south side of Estero Bay, Dr. Parsons was assessing the damage to FGCUs VESTER Marine and Environmental Science Research Field Station off of Bonita Beach Boulevard.
"Really, the damage that we're seeing was all about storm surge. We see very little wind damage. The first thing is just sorting through what we can keep and what needs to be thrown away and then just rebuild and see, you know, what can we do better. So it'll take a while to get everything up and running.
Naturally, the deployment for Kimberly's Reef would have to wait, but the clock was ticking. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit was only good through the fall of 2023.
Major support for the production of the Kimberly's Reef documentary and dispatches is provided by Bodil and George Gellman, who believe the human spirit is behind every scientific discovery.