BAY COUNTY, Fla. (WMBB) — Bay County officials are continuing to build up the artificial reef systems of local shores.
As part of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP paid billions to establish the RESTORE Act fund. Bay County is using some of that money to deploy about 1,000 tons of old concrete road material to create patchwork reefs.
“This is our closest permitted area to St. Andrews pass, to the center of the site it’s about 5.1 nautical miles and it is going to generate a ton of beautiful new habitat,” UF/IFAS Coastal Resources Coordinator of Bay County Chantille Weber said.
On Wednesday, crews dropped the second batch of concrete materials 75 feet deep into the Gulf of Mexico.
“We have several different businesses that are based off of tourism, including our charter industries, both diving and fishing and then we have people that service those industries with hotels, people that have restaurants, bait shops, and those types of things,” UF/IFAS County Extension Director Scott Jackson said. “So the trickle-down effect of the artificial reefs we put out has a cumulative impact on our economy here in Bay County.”
“There’ll be more people with smaller boats who will be able to enjoy these places and that’s kind of what it’s all about, just trying to build up our recreational fishing spots,” Bay County Commissioner Tommy Hamm said.
Officials said within the next four weeks they hope all 10 reefs will be deployed and fish will very quickly start using the reefs.
“We saw that the RESTORE deployment from last week already had fish schooling above which is really nice. We like to say it takes three to five months for those species to start establishing to call it home, but really three to five years is the time frame for it becomes a fully viable reef,” Weber said.
Crews plan to dump two more loads of concrete on Thursday and Friday. This is the first phase of a two-phase artificial reef project.
Click here to learn more about this project and other artificial reefs in the area.
