In addition to the military barges and New York subway cars, there are pieces of old bridges, metal chicken transport cages, culverts - which are popular because fish can shelter inside of them - concrete power poles and the rudder and propellor from the Golden Ray, the cargo ship that capsized near Brunswick a few years ago. Divers also visit the artificial reefs - to see the wildlife and to spearfish.Ī whole array of things have been used for the reefs over the years. Popular sportfish like grouper, snapper and sea bass use Georgia’s artificial reefs, as do large fish that might stop by for a bite, such as amberjack and sailfish, Hinton said. “You might be able to tell, ‘Hey, that was a subway car that all these corals and sponges have grown on, or that was a tank.’” “You can’t really see any difference between it and a natural reef except for maybe the outline of the shape,” Brinton said. So the artificial reefs begin with unnatural material, but what grows on and around them is natural, and comparable to a real, rocky reef. And so they’re just drifting around and looking for a suitable location and we’re providing that location,” Brinton said. “Corals and sponges all have larval stages that are floating free in the water. Once they’re there, though, it doesn’t take long for marine life to start populating them. He said the objects they use to make reefs have to be big and heavy enough to stay on the bottom, and DNR has to be able to get them clean enough to not pollute the environment. “They’re things that are donated to us or provided at a very low cost to us.” “What we call materials of opportunity,” said marine biologist Cameron Brinton with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. The artificial reefs attract marine wildlife like a natural reef would.
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