Show Title: Building Blocks of the Sea
Producer: Linda Kubitz
Time: 27:40
Show begins here:
>>>TODAY ON IMPACT... BUILDING A HOME FOR MARINE LIFE ON THE OCEAN FLOOR.
---(It's a win-win situation. The fish win because they have more habitat. The anglers win because they have a place to go where there's a good chance of catching a fish.)---
---(We want to be sure as fishery managers that we can sustain that in the years to come and one of the things that we need to know is what the impact of all these artificial reefs are.)---
---(Well, one of the potential benefits that we see with artificial reefs may be in reducing by just a slight amount the natural mortality that occurs in some of the younger fish.)-
---(You can't keep taking from a resource and not put something back. You have to understand what that resource needs to replenish itself, and you should set about doing that if you intend to maintain a given amount of fish or a certain number of fish per area.)---
---(If we don't protect our marine resources at this point, a lot of people, including myself, will be out of the work we choose to do.)---
---(The ultimate goal for what we do is really to find better ways to manage our fishery resources. To improve on our ability to not only use them for human benefit, but also to conserve them for the long term benefit.)---
Music/Animation
>>>THIS IS IMPACT. A WEEKLY LOOK AT ISSUES AND ANSWERS THAT IMPACT OUR LIVES AND THE WORLD AROUND US. PRODUCED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA'S INSTITUTE OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES.
---(music)---
>>>THE UNDERSEA WORLD IS MADE UP OF A HOST OF MYSTERIES FROM THE SHY, CAMOUFLAGING FLOUNDER TO THE INTIMIDATING, YET HARMLESS NURSE SHARK. DIVERS CAN EASILY GET CAUGHT UP IN THE MAZE OF WONDERS THIS ARENA HAS TO OFFER. BUT ONE THING IS FOR CERTAIN, IF NOT PROPERLY MAINTAINED AND PROTECTED, THIS MAGICAL MARINE ECO-SYSTEM WE CALL THE OCEAN COULD DISAPPEAR RIGHT BEFORE OUR VERY EYES.
>>>CAPT. RUSS JONES-E&B MARINE: It would virtually destroy the charter boat business and the marine retail business. Having the ecosystem go bad is the worst case scenario.
>>>CAPT. RICHARD YANT-NATURE COAST CHARTERS: If we don't protect our marine resources at this point, a lot of people, including myself, will be out of the work we choose to do.
>>>THE MARINE ENVIRONMENT REQUIRES A DELICATE BALANCE TO KEEP IT HEALTHY AND A LOT DIFFERENT FACTORS REST ON THAT SCALE... THE FISH POPULATIONS, THE FISHING INDUSTRY, AND THE RESIDENTS NEARBY. BALANCING ALL THOSE NEEDS CAN BE A DIFFICULT CHALLENGE, BUT IT'S ONE THAT MUST BE UNDERTAKEN IF WE ARE ALL TO ENJOY A BOUNTY OF SEAFOOD AND PRESERVE THE ECO-SYSTEM AT THE SAME TIME.
>>>CAPT. JIM TOWNSEND-TOWNSEND MARINE: You can't keep taking from a resource and not put something back. You have to understand what that resource needs to replenish itself, and you should set about doing that if you intend to maintain a given amount of fish or a certain number of fish in an area. --(music)---
>>>THIS SECTION OF THE OCEAN FLOOR IS TEEMING WITH MARINE LIFE FROM ALGAE AND SPONGES TO THE POPULAR GAME FISH, GAG GROUPER. BUT IT DIDN'T ALWAYS LOOK LIKE THIS. BEFORE ARTIFICIAL REEF BLOCKS WERE ADDED, THE SANDY BOTTOM APPEARED STERILE SUPPORTING ONLY MICROSCOPIC MARINE LIFE TO ENRICH THE HABITAT.
---(music)---
>>>WHAT IMPACTS DO ARTIFICIAL REEFS HAVE ON THE MYSTERIES OF THE DEEP?
>>>THAT'S WHAT UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA RESEARCHERS ARE TRYING TO FIND OUT. THEY'RE DIVING IN FOR AN UP CLOSE EXAMINATION OF THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE SEA.
---(music)---
>>>WHEN YOU SET ABOUT THE TASK OF TRYING TO DUPLICATE WHAT MOTHER NATURE HAS ALREADY DONE, YOU BUILD ON WHAT'S ALREADY KNOWN... STUDYING ALL ASPECTS OF THE HABITAT CAN HELP YOU GET TO KNOW WHAT YOU'RE UP AGAINST.
>>>DR. BILL LINDBERG-UF MARINE ECOLOGIST: When we look out over the ocean, we see almost a continuous, uniform set of waves and you know, we don't see much there. If you were to move along the bottom like a fish does, you'll see that the bottom habitat is really a mosaic or a patchwork of different habitat types. And the animals that live on the bottom or near it, are adapted to that habitat patchiness. They exploit the patchiness, and-and incorporate that into their-into their way of making a living. So what we sought to do in beginning the artificial reef program, was to explore how the animals natural tendencies to use patchy habitat could be manipulated, ultimately to benefit the fisheries stock and to more directly manage the stock. Traditionally we manage fishermen rather than the fish, and by dealing with their habitat, we hope to be able to manage the resources on which the fish depend, so that we can more directly husband our fisheries resources.
---(cranes)---
>>>ADDING ARTIFICIAL REEF MATERIAL TO THE OCEAN FLOOR IS NOTHING NEW. PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DOING IT FOR YEARS.
---(water splashes)---
>>>BUT WHAT THIS RESEARCH PROJECT HAS DONE IS FINE-TUNED THE PROCESS AND TURNED IT INTO A SCIENCE.
>>>TOWNSEND: It represents pretty much state-of-the-art actually as far as what we know based on the reef that we started about 5 or 6 years ago. We did all variations on setting them up and turning them in different directions and stuff like that. So now we've learned that certain patterns tend to optimize, bring about the optimum return.
---(pouring concrete)---
>>>LINDBERG: Well we've chosen concrete as our basic material, because its foundation is very much similar to the natural limestone of the region. It's colonized very quickly by the following organisms, the sponges, soft corals, sea whips, and so forth that are naturally found on rock outcroppings. It also allows us to control the shape and the complexity, where you can mold it into the form that you want. We settled on using a standard concrete cube as a unit, with nothing more than a 50--55 gallon drum as a center cavity, to standardize the complexity and then use these cubes as building blocks.
>>>THE ARTIFICIAL REEF BLOCKS WERE BUILT TO EXACT SPECIFICATIONS WHICH ALLOWED FOR SMALLER HOLES AROUND THE OUTSIDE AND A LARGER HOLE IN THE MIDDLE. THIS DESIGN WAS NO ACCIDENT.
>>>TOWNSEND: The small fish, the juvenile fish will get into the small holes and between the spaces. The larger spaces, even the large grouper, will go inside those to get out of the current and that sort of thing. And also it develops a habitat for him as a predator at the same time develops a habitat for these juvenile grouper as just plain protection.
>>>LINDBERG: And it makes sense that a large fish isn't going to cram itself into a hole that's too small. By the same token, a small fish won't find the same kind of refuge in a hole that's too large. The cubes allow us to create cavity space not just with the holes that are built into the cubes, but the space between cubes. So we have a great deal of complexity with a very simple building block, that can be manipulated easily. That we can move into place easily.
---(forklift)---
>>>MOVING THE BLOCKS ON LAND IS A DIFFERENT MATTER ALL TOGETHER. EACH CONCRETE CUBE WEIGHS AROUND 26-HUNDRED POUNDS... ABOUT AS MUCH AS A SMALL CAR .
---(forklift)---
>>>ONCE THE FORM FOR THE CUBE IS HAMMERED IN PLACE, THE CONCRETE IS POURED AND ALLOWED TO SET. THEN THE WOODEN MOLD IS REMOVED AND THE BLOCK IS READY TO BE DROPPED.
---(removing mold)---
>>>TOWNSEND: We fabricate approximately 20 a day as we work along. Every two weeks we make a drop. So far, we've made the Citrus County drop, the Levy County drop, the Dixie County drop. This load you see going on today will be going to Taylor County and dropped off of Keaton Beach.
---(nats/loading on barge)-
>>>LOADING DOZENS OF CONCRETE CUBES ONTO A BARGE CAN TAKE DAYS AND THE WEIGHT OF THE CARGO REQUIRES EXTREME CAUTION.
---(crane)---
>>>IT TAKES BOTH A FORKLIFT AND A CRANE TO GET THE BARGE LOADED FOR EACH TRIP AND LITTLE SPACE GOES TO WASTE.
---(barge)---
>>> ONCE UNDERWAY, EXPERTS TAKE AS MUCH CARE IN LOCATING THE RIGHT SITE FOR THE NEW ARTIFICIAL REEF AS THEY DID IN BUILDING THE CUBE ITSELF.
---(dropping cube)---
>>>LINDBERG: Before we built any of the reefs we had to do a lot of sight surveys. Divers surveying the bottom for appropriate habitat, appropriate bottom type. We had to have sand bottom, but didn't want the sand to be so deep that the cubes might bury. We were looking for a bedrock of limestone covered by a layer of sand. And we searched until we found appropriate sights that would allow the placement of the size of patch reefs that we were going to build.
>>>THE DESIGN OF THE REEF MATERIAL HAS UNDERGONE MINOR CHANGES SINCE THE RESEARCH PROJECT BEGAN BUT THE INSTALLATION METHOD HAS BEEN REVOLUTIONIZED OVER THE YEARS.
>>>TOWNSEND: We stacked these cubes right along the edge of the deck, tripped them with wires and just dumped them over the side. They go down there helter skelter and be a mess on the bottom. Then divers will have to go down, put chains through these holes, fill air bags with a bottle, stack them, pick them up, and move them along the bottom. Two divers at least. And they might do 4 an hour. With this grapple I made, I can set 4 every 2 minutes.
---(crane)---
>>>TOWNSEND: We pick them up, take them, set them over the side right beside the buoy, and we'll release them on the bottom. They're preset. The diver doesn't have to go down and mess with them. Now, when we set more than 4, we have a diver who sits down there, he gives me directions on the headset. He has a hard-hat or a Kirby-Moore unit. He talks to me and says move to the right... move to the left... up or down and which ever way it has to go.
---(talking on headsets)---
>>>THIS LONG DISTANCE COMMUNICATION SEEMS TO WORK PRETTY WELL. TOWNSEND SAYS THE BLOCKS ARE PLACED WITHIN 2-3 INCHES FROM THEIR TARGET.
>>>LINDBERG: The installation of reef materials has really evolved from being a simple barge it off offshore and drop it, and just by brute force moving it into place. When we first began, our divers would go down and use lift bags and spend a lot of time on the bottom just man-handling these cubes into position in order to have the kind of experimental controls that we required, but given the interest in this kind of technology, you know, the private sector really has come on and devised much more cost-effective ways of placing the materials just as carefully as we did with a lot of labor.
---(crane)---
>>>THE CUBES ARE DROPPED AT VARIOUS LOCATIONS IN BETWEEN 20-40 FEET OF WATER IN THE GULF OF MEXICO. WHEN THE WEATHER IS GOOD, DROPPING THEM CAN BE TRICKY... BUT WHEN IT GETS ROUGH LIKE THIS, THE DIFFICULT BECOMES NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE.
>>>TOWNSEND: We've suffered a pretty strong weather front. It started early this morning... actually yesterday. We have seas now between 4 and 5 feet. You just heard part of it now on the bow of the barge. It makes it a little rough to set but the visibility is good underwater. We might as well go ahead and set today because if this wind stays up, tomorrow it'll look like chalk-milk down below so even though it's rough seas, we probably stand to do a better job today than if we waited.
---(dropping cubes)---
>>>INSTALLING THE ARTIFICIAL REEF CUBES IS ONLY HALF THE BATTLE. THE REAL WORK BEGINS ONCE THE DUST SETTLES AND MARINE LIFE MOVES INTO THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
---(music)---
>>> JIM LOFTIN - UF BIOLOGICAL SCIENTIST: We've had about 90 species that we've found over four years, covering the whole range of what's out here, from tiny pike fish and sea horses and little tiny tropical fish up to grouper and big Jew fish. Nurse sharks like these reefs, it's a wide gamut. The pelagic fish come by like Spanish mackerel and then we have resident reef fishes, such as grouper, which are here year-round, and sheeps head which really accumulate during the winter. So there's a wide variety of fish out here including many fish which are of great interest to the recreational fishermen.
---(music)---
>>>THE SUWANNEE REGIONAL REEF SYSTEM AS IT'S CALLED CONSISTS OF 22 ARTIFICIAL REEF... 16 OF WHICH ARE CORE TO THE RESEARCH EXPERIMENTS. BUILDING THE REEF CUBES TO THE RIGHT SPECIFICATIONS IS AN IMPORTANT STEP IN THE PROJECT BUT IT'S ONLY THE BEGINNING.
>>>JASON HALE-UF BIOLOGICAL SCIENTIST: It's a sight like no other to just go down and see 50 fish all staring at you and be able to try to understand what they're doing and how they're doing it and how old they are. You see them interacting with the bait fish and some of the other predators that aren't as numerous or big. I think it's all pretty interesting.
---(splash)---
>>>UF SCIENTISTS MONITORED THE FISH AROUND THE ARTIFICIAL REEF SITES AND EVEN MEASURED SOME OF THEM FOR THE STUDY BUT THAT WASN'T ENOUGH. THEY WANTED A WAY TO KEEP TRACK OF THE FISH WITHOUT GETTING THEIR FEET WET. THAT TOOK SOME DOING.
---(The sonic tags are picked up by an underwater microphone called a hydrophone. The hydrophone is just connected to a simple listening device manufactured by Sonotronics for these particular sonic tags.)---
>>>TECHNOLOGY CAME TO THE RESCUE IN THE FORM OF ULTRASONIC TAGS. EACH TAG HAS ITS OWN UNIQUE SEQUENCE OF PULSES SO EACH TAGGED FISH CAN BE INDIVIDUALLY RECOGNIZED.
---(This would have four pulses... a space... six pulses... a space... and then four pulses and then repeat this train and that's how we can identify the fish with this tag in it.)---
---(pulses)---
---(This is 4-6-4... it's 5-1-6... total length and a standard length is 4-2-1)---
>>>HALE: We can measure a fish once we insert that tag before we put it in the water, then visit it once or twice a month for a year or two, and see whether that fish is still in the same place that we put it, or whether it has relocated, or whether it has just disappeared altogether. After a certain amount of time, we hope to come back and get these fish and find out how well they've done on these reefs. They could have grown in length significantly, or they may not have. They may have just been staying around these reefs to avoid being damaged by storms, being thrown around by the significant wave action that we've seen out here.
---(I'm making notes to be sure we don't insert a tag and then sew the fish up without knowing which tag we put in.)---
>>>TAGGING A FISH ISN'T AS EASY AS YOU MIGHT THINK. FIRST YOU HAVE TO CATCH ONE THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY... ON A ROD AND REEL... THEN, IF YOU'RE LUCKY AND IT'S THE RIGHT SIZE, THE FISH IS BROUGHT ABOARD AND PREPPED FOR SURGERY. THAT'S RIGHT... SURGERY. THE ULTRASONIC TAG GOES WHERE NO TAG HAS GONE BEFORE.
---(We load a new scalpel in for each fish. Because they're completely sterile scalpels. We use alcohol to sterilize the needle holders and the scissors and forceps, and any other tool that we may need during the operation. We try to keep all these instruments as clean as possible. We have to dry the alcohol off of them of course.)---
>>>LOFTIN: We transfer the fish from the holding tank into a surgery tank, which is just another small cooler. That tank has 80 parts per million (ppm) of a common fish anesthetic called Tricane or MS 222, after about 10 minutes, the fish is anesthetized so that it won't jump around when we're doing the surgery, it won't be hurt. We put the fish on an inverted board, so that the head remains underwater. We use a pure oxygen feed into it, we keep pure oxygen flowing over the gills. A small incision is made in the side of the fish. The tag is inserted into the body cavity, right at the very bottom of the body cavity so that it doesn't disturb the internal organs any more than necessary. The incision is closed up with three small sutures. And we use a common antibiotic called Antilog to sterilize things and to keep things as clean as possible out here. And then the fish is placed back into the holding tank with the recirculating saltwater. It comes out of the anesthesia in just 2-3 minutes, and seems to be just fine when we release it under water. They generally swim inside the reef and probably spend a few days there. We've come back after a few days and found them swimming around normally. And after only a few weeks, seven or eight weeks, it's almost impossible to identify which fish has been tagged. The sutures come out and the wound heals completely and the fish seems to behave normally.
---(beeping)---
>>>ALTHOUGH IT MAY BE ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO TELL WHICH FISH HAS BEEN TAGGED BY LOOKING AT IT A FEW MONTHS AFTER SURGERY, LISTENING TO IT IS A WHOLE DIFFERENT MATTER. THE PULSES GIVE IT AWAY EVERY TIME.
>>>HALE: We can hear two pulses, four pulses, three pulses, five pulses, and then it repeats, and then we know which fish it is. We do have an underwater microphone that we can take with us and we can point, and we can find out exactly which fish is making all that noise. We don't even need to go down. We can throw the microphone overboard here and listen and we can hear that pulse.
>>>LOFTIN: We're trying to see how long these grouper stay on artificial reefs out here in the Gulf of Mexico. And the sonic tags have an advantage over normal, plastic tags in that we can hear them with an underwater microphone and that makes it very easy to relocate the fish.
>>>THE POPULAR GAME FISH, THE GAG GROUPER WAS CHOSEN FOR THE STUDY BECAUSE IT'S IMPORTANT TO BOTH COMMERCIAL AND RECREATIONAL FISHERMEN. IT'S ALSO A DOMINANT PREDATOR IN THE REGION.
>>>LOFTIN: We want to know if the fish are on the artificial reefs long enough for the reefs to influence the life of the fish. And if so, we're going to study that influence by looking at the growth of Gag, and studying their physical condition. We'll measure their weight, or size, so to speak, how plump they are. And we hope to see how the architecture of the reef, the size of the reef, and the spacing between small patch reefs affects the fitness of the Gags.
>>>SCIENTISTS LEFT NOTHING TO CHANCE DURING THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ARTIFICIAL REEFS. THEY DESIGNED THE CONCRETE BLOCKS, SELECTED THE RIGHT SITES, AND EVEN DECIDED HOW BIG EACH REEF WOULD BE AND HOW FAR APART THEY WOULD BE LOCATED FROM EACH OTHER.
>>>LINDBERG: We can begin to ask questions about where can we get the greatest bang for our reef building buck. You know, what's the most cost effective way to build the reefs, depending on the management objectives you have. If you want to build reefs particularly for fishing efficiency, you might want to have larger reefs knowing that the biological benefits might not be as great as they could be on somewhat smaller reefs. The same amount of investment, in somewhat smaller, more widely scattered reefs, may prove to be a better return on investment in terms of the benefits accruing to the fish.
>>>THE ARTIFICIAL REEFS WERE LAID OUT IN A HEXAGON USING TWO DIFFERENT REEF SIZES... THE SMALLER ONES HAVE 4 CUBES IN EACH REEF AND THE LARGER HAVE 16. THE DISTANCES BETWEEN THE REEFS WERE ALSO VARIED FOR THE STUDY. SOME WERE PLACED AS CLOSE TOGETHER AS 75 FEET WHILE OTHERS WERE LOCATED MUCH FURTHER AWAY FROM EACH OTHER... NEARLY 700 FEET. THE INITIAL RESULTS MIGHT SURPRISE YOU.
>>>LINDBERG: Increasing the amount of reef material 4-fold didn't give us 4 times as many fish. It gives us 2 to 3 times as many fish. So there's some processes limiting the number of fish or giving us a diminishing return on an increase in reef material.
>>>THIS RESEARCH MAY ALSO HELP ANSWER THE AN IMPORTANT QUESTION CONCERNING "ATTRACTION VERSUS PRODUCTION". THAT MEANS ARE FISH SIMPLY ATTRACTED TO ARTIFICIAL REEFS OR DO THE REEFS ACTUALLY BENEFIT THE FISH IN SOME WAY.
>>>LOFTIN: That's a very old question in artificial reefs, anything that you put in the water will attract fish. If you go throw a tree, a pine tree in the water, and come back a few months later, there'll be a lot of fish there. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's doing the fish a lot of good.
>>>ON THE OTHER HAND, IF THE FISH DO BENEFIT FROM ARTIFICIAL REEFS, THE POSSIBILITIES ARE NUMEROUS.
>>>LINDBERG: One of the potential benefits that we see, with artificial reefs, may be in reducing by just a slight amount the natural mortality that occurs in some of the younger fish.
>>>CHARTER BOAT OPERATORS SAY THEIR LIVELIHOODS DEPEND UPON A HEALTHY FISH POPULATION AND THEY HOPE NEW ARTIFICIAL REEF MATERIAL WILL IMPROVE THE MARINE HABITAT IN THE COMING YEARS.
>>>YANT: I think a lot of these artificial reefs will provide more places for the food chain to start.
>>>JONES: It's a win-win situation. The fish win because they have more habitat. The anglers win cause they have a place to go that there's a good chance of catching a fish.
>>>LINDBERG: The ultimate goal for what we do is really to find better ways to manage our fishery resources. To improve on our ability to not only use them for human benefit, but also to conserve them for the long term benefit.
>>>ALTHOUGH GREAT CARE IS TAKEN WHEN EACH ARTIFICIAL REEF BLOCK IS PLACED... THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES IT'LL STAY THERE. IT MIGHT BE HARD TO BELIEVE BUT DURING SEVERE STORMS, THE 26-HUNDRED POUND BLOCKS CAN BE TOSSED AROUND LIKE CHILDREN'S TOYS. THAT'S WHY UF RESEARCHERS ARE CONSTANTLY MONITORING BOTH THE FISH POPULATIONS AROUND THE ARTIFICIAL REEFS AND THE REEF LOCATIONS THICSELVES IN ORDER TO INSURE A PRODUCTIVE MARINE HABITAT IN THE FUTURE.
>>>LINDBERG: This is really what we're trying to do is add new tools to the tool box, so that we can do a better job of conserving and sustaining the production of our fishery resources for recreational fishermen, seafood production, and whatever the future might bring.
---(music)---
>>>THERE'S NO DOUBT ARTIFICIAL REEFS ARE POPULAR AS FISHING SITES BUT CAREFUL ATTENTION TO WHERE, HOW, AND WHY THEY'RE BUILT COULD ALSO HELP CONSERVE DWINDLING FISH POPULATIONS FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS. ALTHOUGH UF RESEARCHERS ARE STUDYING THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE SEA... THEIR WORK IS ANYTHING BUT CHILD'S PLAY. THEY'RE CONSTRUCTING A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE INNER WORKINGS OF THIS MAGNIFICENT UNDERSEA WORLD.
---(music)---
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>>>IMPACT... A WEEKLY LOOK AT ISSUES AND ANSWERS THAT IMPACT OUR LIVES AND THE WORLD AROUND US. IT'S PRODUCED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA'S INSTITUTE OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES.