Artificial Reef Ecosystems

Riviera Beach Maritime Academy students construct components for artificial reef off Lake Park

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

LAKE PARK — They look like rice cakes stacked on top of each other, but the artificial reefs scuttled in the Intracoastal Waterway Friday off Kelsey Park in Lake Park are actually made of limestone, steel and concrete.

The cylinder-shaped EcoSystem reefs designed by Walter Marine were built with carefully selected limestone trucked from the north Florida town of Perry and attached to fiberglass pipe with concrete and reinforcing steel bars by students at Riviera Beach Maritime Academy.

Teacher David Sellepack said 40 marine science students have worked on various parts of the artificial reef project since last year. Students surveyed the site, created computer-assisted drawings and made presentations to secure a $40,000 grant through the Lake Worth Lagoon Partnership Grant Program.

"I think the students learned a lot from it," Sellepack said.

Students also built the 18 reef modules, following instructions from designer David Walter of Orange Beach, Ala.

On Friday, Sellepack and several RBMA students watched as contractors lowered the 3-foot-tall reef modules into 14 feet of water about 175 feet east of the sea wall at Kelsey Park.

The same artificial reef site holds parts of the old Forest Hill High School building, including the falcon mosaic from the old gymnasium, scuttled by the school's environmental academy in the summer of 2003.

"Future classes will compare the growth rate (of marine life) from the Forest Hill (debris) and the rice cakes," Sellepack said. "Over time, we'll see."

Encrusting marine organisms usually grow better on craggy limestone than on relatively smooth concrete, and the 4- to 5-inch spaces between the circular layers of limestone rock should provide good hiding places for juvenile fish and possibly spiny lobster, said Brock Stanaland, artificial reef coordinator with Palm Beach County's Department of Environmental Resources Management.

"I'm hoping we're making lobster condos," Stanaland said.