Artificial Reefs

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As the name implies, an artificial reef is an underwater structure man-made for one of three reasons: 1) aiding ailing ocean ecologies by giving sea fauna a home/feeding ground 2) protecting coastlines from erosion or 3) creating quality surf where there's otherwise none. Environmental reefs, essentially glorified wire mesh cages, have been installed and thrive at numerous locales worldwide. So have a few attempts to block the see. But the perpetual promise of a permanent structure that focuses and grooms swell has thus far (in America, at least) proved empty, principally because no one wants to foot a mammoth bill just so people can get tubed (on that note: Corky Carroll for president).

As early as the 1700s, Japanese fishermen sank weighted bamboo frames to attract fish, a practice duplicated stateside (substitute logs for bamboo) in 1880s South Carolina. Angling aside, faux reefs entered the surfing consciousness in the early-'60s when essays by forward-minded gents like oceanographer/North Shore proto-charger Ricky Grigg first posited their potential benefits for surfers, fishermen and divers alike. From the beginning, it was obvious that surfers knew only an acid-dosed politician would fund anything solely benefiting surfers, so all studies/essays/pleas from and since then have highlighted "secondary benefits" to other waterfolk. If occasionally true, the argument is nonetheless akin to pot activists extolling the comfort and haute couture of hemp slacks when all they really wanna do is get stoned legally.

Pouring over surf publications from the subsequent decades yields countless "what if?" pieces, some of which thought sinking rusted cars, retired barges or cement blocks might be the answer, all of which fell on deaf ears. During that period, several new waves were created either by fresh jetties of sand restoration projects (as in El Segundo's "Hammerland") but, save the odd Army Corps of Engineers happy accident, nothing memorable via artificial reef. In 1989, Patagonia guru Yvon Chouinard, in cahoots with the Surfrider Foundation, announced a massive study on the pros and cons of building a reef off Emma Wood Beach in Ventura County. However positive their findings, and despite some notable steam, the dream was never realized, and to this day, Emma Wood is a crappy closeout you pass on the way to Rincon.

Despite countless hypes and heated discussions in California, it would actually be that bastion of progressiveness called Australia that would step forward to actualize a false reef for surfers. That the land Down Under beat us to the punch says heaps about the way surfing and surfers are viewed in the two different countries. "Cables," near Cottesloe, West Australia, was born in 1998 while another reef was added on the Gold Coast, near Narrowneck, in 1999. While neither reefs are man's answer to G-Land, both Cables and Narrowneck have reeled perfectly numerous times.

"It's like nothing I've ever surfed before in Perth," longtime West Oz hellman Toryn Crocker told a local paper in Cables. "It's a heavy reefbreak with a severe drop. I wouldn't go so far as to call it scary, but it was real heart-in-your-mouth type stuff."

Meanwhile, Pratte's Reef in El Segundo became the first surf-minded artificial reef in North America in the fall of 2000. But unlike its Down Under counterparts, Pratte's failed to impress even the most surf-starved masses of Los Angeles. After eight years, it barely broke for a single season and was removed in 2008.
Whether somewhat lackluster or completely lame, the 'Achilles Heel' for these projects isn't that engineers' imaginations are too big, but that budgets are too small, as decision-makers approve the projects -- then provide the funding to build something ultimately less ambitious. As a result, the final product rarely performs well as either a wave or coastal protector.
"The simple fact is that reef type projects have never been given a fair chance in terms of budgets or expectations relative to 'traditional' coastal engineering projects." says Dr. Jose Borrero. "Pratte's Reef was doomed for failure before it entered the water."

-- Greg Heller (updated, December 2009)