ARTIFICIAL REEFS: Are artificial reefs creating habitat or 
just aggregating existing populations... find out on 
Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

An article by Melissa Gaskill in the June issue of TPW 
magazine, explores the value of artificial reefs. These are 
retired structures like oil platforms that create much-
needed hard substrate in the gulf. She asks whether the 
reefs increase marine populations, or simply aggregate 
existing populations. 

07 -- The first thing that happens when you put any kind of 
structure in the water is that fish species will congregate around 
it; they're attracted to that.

Dale Shively is TPW program leader for artificial reefs. He 
says congregating is just the beginning.

20 -- There also is production that goes on. Once you get that 
marine life growing, you're creating an ecosystem. You're not 
only bringing fish species in, but they stay there, live there, they 
spawn there. You can find the juveniles on there. That doesn't 
mean that some of those fish species don't migrate away at 
times. But they actually use it for various life stages.

Through a monitoring program, Shively says they're 
attempting to quantify various fish species by relative 
abundance.

21 -- There is also a debate about how valuable are oil platforms 
in the Gulf of Mexico. There are a lot of fishermen who claim that 
you remove these and you're destroying the red snapper 
population. There's another school of thought that the red 
snapper were here originally without the oil platforms. But, 
there's no doubt that the red snapper population has increased 
since we have more structure out there.

Read about this debate in the June issue of TPW 
Magazine.

The WSFR supports our Series. For Texas Parks and 
Wildlife, I'm Cecilia Nasti.


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