The goal for any artificial reef is to create a habitat to draw fish to an area. The design for the 11-acre Kimberly’s Reef, with its 18 cement culverts, is meant to do just that — while also providing a host of opportunities for experimentation.
But any scuba diver will tell you that flat surfaces are not very appealing when looking for structures and wildlife under the water. That's why Dr. Mike Parsons with The Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University invited Professor Tricia Fay from FGCU's Bower School of Music and the Arts to be on the community advisory board for the Vester Marine Field Station.
"He is wonderfully committed to interdisciplinary engagement between the sciences and the arts and other disciplines for what is happening at Vester and specifically for what is happening on Kimberly's Reef," Fay said of Parsons. Fay, who teaches ceramics and is an assistant director at the Bower School, met with board members and came up with an idea to incorporate artwork into the overall project.
About Kimberly's Reef
- What is Kimberly's Reef?
- Reef complex made from cement culverts
- Construction firm hired
- The reef finally becomes reality
"It was just a good opportunity to meet their needs to start a new, exciting long-term project that integrates ceramics and science and specifically the ocean," she said. "What we promised to do was generate ceramic objects that would be incorporated into the concrete structures that make up the foundation of Kimberly's Reef. Our intention for the project is called "Domesticating the Reef." It's about moving in the furniture. It's about decorating the walls. It's about making the space more habitat friendly."
Professor Fay enlisted the help of FGCU Junior Macy Noll to help with the project.
"She came up to me and told me about this project and asked if I would want to be a part of it. And, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, yes,’" said Noll. "And at the time, she didn't even know that I was double-majoring in art and biology. So, this project really just fits perfectly with my passions and my dreams and my career goals."
In particular, Noll is interested also in how to make the culvert more habitat-friendly for the micro- and macro-organisms in the Gulf of Mexico.
"These organisms, you know, typically will settle on the skeletons of past corals. And it's this huge organism, this ecosystem that grows on top of itself," she said. "Usually there's a lot of surface complexity, but with the cement culverts, we don't have that. So we are trying to mimic nature by creating these structures that will go on top of that and provide that complexity that will be attractive to a greater degree of biodiversity."
But before creating anything for the reef, Fay and Noll needed to determine which ceramic material would be most durable for the underwater structures.
"So when we were talking to the scientists and I was saying, 'Well, should we use stoneware, should we use earthenware?" recalled Fay. "Because we have to keep circling back to the fact that this is a science project, they said: 'Do both and we'll see what happens on the two'."
Fay described the differences between the two.
"Earthenware is a lower-temperature clay, and it's fired entirely in the electric kiln," she said. "At its peak temperature, it's quite hard, but still relatively porous and somewhat less durable, as a result. The higher-temperature clay is the stoneware. That is fired up to the point where the clay body sort of fully glassifies, it has a glassy matrix. It's very hard, it's very durable."
Both, she said, historically have been fine underwater. "There are earthenware amphora that have been lying on the bottom of the Mediterranean for 2,000 years and they've held up just fine. So I think both these clay bodies will hold up to our perspective."
Noll adds that it will be interesting to see how clay compares to other materials used in artificial reefs when it comes to attracting wildlife.
"Most of the structures, the substrates that are used in artificial reefs are metal or concrete. Sometimes sunken ships, sunken railway cars, just whatever's on hand," she said. "So the idea to use clay, which is this natural material that does not harm the environment in any way and has a very porous microscopic structure, is this new technology that's just now coming on the scene that people are picking up on. Because clay has been seen as purely artistic or, you know, used for commercial purposes for transporting goods."
Texture appeal for wildlife was the next experiment for the art team. The team created small square ceramic tiles called settlement tiles.
"We made four different types of ceramic tiles, all in the same size, but with different levels of structural additions, different levels of rugosity, the introduction of a more textured, more complex surface," said Fay.
In July, the FGCU SCUBA team attached the tiles to the culverts and waited to see which texture wildlife would be attracted to and settle on. In August, they pulled the tiles back up and began examining what was growing on each.
"You can see growth very, very quickly on the most textured tiles. They like the texture, they like the additional structure," said Fay.
Double major Noll is also excited about the growth on the tiles. "I've also been invited to Dr. (Melissa) May's lab to look at some of the settlement that's going on and identify settling species."
The next step for the art team was the fun one - extruding 40 to 50 clay pieces of earthen and stoneware into a variety of shapes, sizes, textures, and compositions.
"The idea with this project was not to create some beautiful sculpture that was meant to be looked at. Right? It's meant to help these organisms take hold and grow and flourish. So, we want to take the ideas from nature. We want to mimic the natural processes that are already occurring in order to help that encourage that growth," said Noll.
"Knowing clay the way I do it was able to imagine all kinds of different ways that it could do that, said Fay. "We could make these things that will go on this exterior corner of that culvert. We can make these things that would go inside the upright culverts that will create ground structure. Then there's the very attractive top flat surface of the lying down culverts where our taller, you know, crazier sculptures could go."
"We're using a variety of techniques. Most of them are made using extrusion. So we have a big wall extruder that you load clay into and then it squirts it out in the specific shape, usually a hollow shape. So that we can create these areas where fish can hide and things can settle inside there and just have a place of safety."
As Noll said, it's not about beauty but function for the fish and other organisms. "We are hoping to see both microscopic organisms and macroscopic organisms. We want to see fish. We want to see sedentary organisms that will adhere to the surface of the clay like corals, like oysters and those kinds of organisms. So that's how we've designed these. Like the clay is porous, so it will help coral larvae take hold and settle. But then we've also created them to be interesting structures for fish. So there are places to hide, places to swim through to encourage that kind of activity."
By summer's end the extrusion and creation process was complete. The day before The Water School SCUBA team and scientists were set to take the first structures out to the reef, the ceramics studio was filled with tables, lined with the future fixtures. Some were shaped like pillars and discs to mimic life-sized hard corals. Other structures, no more than a foot wide, looked like complex, criss-crossed grooved archways or columns pockmarked with nooks and crannies. The earthenware structures were ochre or orange. The stoneware pieces were grayish brown, reddish brown and beige.
In one corner, several pieces were laid out on the floor, each with a numbered tag, all part of the scientific process.
"We have photographed every single piece. We have tagged them all. We'll be creating a whole catalog so that as the monitoring happens over time, you can say, 'Oh my goodness, number 35 is really growing like crazy. You know, what is that?', said Fay. "So, that in future when they do get all covered up, we can see where they started. We can see what went down there and and what it turned into."
The pieces will be installed on the reef through several outings over the next year, a prospect Fay is especially excited about.
"I was a diver for 20 years. I'm looking forward to diving again as this project develops," she said. "Couldn't think of anything much more exciting right now than to watch this grow now over five years."
Fay is also planning to incorporate the Kimberly's Reef project into her classroom.
"Do I want to make more? Oh, yes. And in my ceramics one class, which is where Macy first became interested in this project, we always do a coral reef project. So I'm going to add in making objects for for Kimberley's Reef. And in the spring I'm going to be teaching contemporary ceramics and this project will be a major part of that class."
Macy Noll sees the synergy in developing art for a scientific purpose.
"What art does or helps to do is to facilitate. It's like a bridge between science and the public," she said. "It packages science in a way that's easy for people to understand. It moves them emotionally. It's that pathos and encourages them to care about these things, and what they care about they help support."
Dispatches from Kimberly's Reef are part of a WGCU documentary project about the reef due out in 2025.
The Kimberly's Reef documentary project is generously and partially funded by Bodil and George Gellman.