To Fish, a Shelter; to Critics, It’s Littering

By sinking a Canadian warship into a watery grave off San Diego later this month, tourism boosters will fire the latest salvo in a battle over whether humans have the right to clutter the floor of the world’s oceans.

The Yukon, a 2,890-ton destroyer that once stalked Soviet submarines, will become an underwater magnet for marine life--and a world-class destination for scuba divers.

But the unchecked accumulation of such artificial reefs off California’s coast and elsewhere--from Army tanks and wooden streetcars to piles of asbestos-laden pipe--has sparked fierce debate.

Reef builders say they are creating underwater havens. Even some environmentalists like them, calling them de facto marine preserves.

Critics counter that the ecological and recreational benefits are questionable and that artificial reefs sully a paradise less mapped than the far side of the moon.

“The ocean is still a complex and mysterious place,” said Warner Chabot of the Center for Marine Conservation’s San Francisco office. “Until we understand those issues better, we should go slowly.”

Creating an artificial reef is simple enough. Eager for protection from predators, marine creatures gravitate to any hard structure plunked on the ocean floor. But the unanswered question is whether such reefs merely pull fish away from other parts of the ocean or increase fish populations overall because spawning is safer at the new, protected sites.

“Over the years, we’ve learned that fish will congregate around car batteries--that doesn’t make them valuable fisheries habitat,” said Sierra Club Coastal Programs Director Mark Massara.

Besides creating marine habitat, the reefs can reel in big dollars. A 1999 Florida State University study found $415 million was poured into Florida’s economy each year because of diving and recreation based on artificial reefs.

San Diego officials predict the Yukon will be a popular addition to “Wreck Alley,” which now consists of a cluster of three sunken ships off Mission Beach, and add $3 million annually to the local economy. The nonprofit San Diego Ocean Foundation raised the money for the sinking.

Project Yukon Chairman Dick Long said the sinking, scheduled for July 15, is more than a matter of encouraging tourism. The vessel will provide a safe haven for sea creatures because it will attract divers--and fishing boats must stay 100 yards from divers, he said. “We want to have people take a picture of a fish--you can take his picture a thousand times. You can only shoot him once.”

The earliest known artificial reefs were built from weighted bamboo in 18th century Japan to increase harvests of popular fish, such as snapper. The practice remains largely unchanged in many nations today.

In the United States, reefs made of logs and tubs helped increase catches off the East Coast during the 1800s and early part of this century.

In Orange County, a French economist hoping to feed people in impoverished countries has been embroiled in a legal battle because of a reef he built off Newport Beach 12 years ago. Rodolphe Streichenberger built his Rube Goldberg contraption of worn tires, PVC pipe and plastic jugs to create a mussel-breeding habitat. The California Coastal Commission ordered Streichenberger in May to tear down what they dismiss as an undersea nuisance.

Artificial reefs in the United States are popular sportfishing grounds, so if the sites are merely marine magnets, biologists worry that they may harm entire ecosystems by decreasing fish populations.

Sportfishermen say they breed new life.

“Anybody who doesn’t believe it should take a look at an artificial reef and the immense [number] of marine organisms that live on or adjacent to it,” said Tom Raftican, president of United Anglers of Southern California, a Huntington Beach-based group with 35,000 members. “Fish don’t know whether reefs are artificial or natural.”

California boasts 36 state-sanctioned reefs, and there are thousands more accidental and unofficial ones, including more than 1,700 shipwrecks.

When the state began building reefs in 1958, marine biologists used whatever they were given, which explains the wooden streetcars, 12,000 tires and piles of pipe found off Southern California. As biologists learned more, the department switched to more durable materials, such as concrete rubble, which do not rust or rot.

Still, Department of Fish and Game officials receive some pretty strange offers. Recently they turned down radioactive concrete parts from a nuclear lab that’s being mothballed near Simi Valley. “We said thanks, but no thanks,” said Dave Parker, senior biologist in the marine division.

The Coastal Commission has even ordered artificial reefs to be created to make up for environmental destruction. Southern California Edison Co. is building a $50-million reef on 150 acres off Orange and San Diego counties to compensate for kelp beds destroyed by the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

The commission also ordered Chevron Corp. to pay for a $300,000 reef being built by the Surfrider Foundation off El Segundo. The San Clemente-based environmental group hopes the structure will re-create a good surfing wave destroyed by a Chevron jetty, said Christopher J. Evans, executive director.

Surfrider supports limited use of artificial reefs, to make up for the human toll on the ocean, he said.

Many environmentalists are unwilling to take a strong position on artificial reefs because so few scientific studies have been performed. Much of the research has been funded by the oil industry, which concedes that it has a vested interest because of the millions of dollars companies save by turning obsolete rigs into artificial reefs.

Dozens of tapped-out rigs have been turned into artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico off Texas, Louisiana and Florida.

Quenton Dokken, associate director of the Center for Coastal Studies at Texas A&M-Corpus; Christi, has studied marine life around artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico since 1992, funded by the British Petroleum Co., Mobil Oil Corp., Texaco Inc., the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife, and others.

“Do they contribute to the overall ecology? The answer to that is absolutely, there’s no question about it,” Dokken said. “Do artificial reefs increase the numbers of harvestable fish? I don’t know that, nor does anyone else.”

Dokken said a multiyear study to determine productivity at artificial reefs could cost millions of dollars--money no one has been willing to spend.

Aera Energy LLC--a partnership of Mobil and Shell Oil Co.--and Chevron are among those pushing to turn California oil rigs into permanent reefs. State law now requires oil companies to entirely remove obsolete rigs, cap underwater wells and return the sea floor to its natural condition.

A bill by state Sen. Dede Alpert (D-Coronado) would allow the rigs to be turned into reefs. The bill would put 30% to 65% of the oil industry’s savings into an endowment fund for marine preservation. Approved by the Senate, it is scheduled to be heard in August by an Assembly committee.

George Steinbach, Chevron’s decommissioning project manager, said a state marine fund could reap $300 million if all of California’s rigs were allowed to remain in place and become artificial preserves.

But even some supporters of artificial reefs worry that leaving the rigs in place would be dangerous because of the precedent that would set.

“We’re not convinced that the alleged scientific benefit to habitat is worth the sort of larger social encouragement it gives the oil companies,” said Evans of Surfrider.

But Janelle Zobelein, executive director of California Artificial Reef Enhancement, said, “This bill isn’t about the oil industry. It’s about marine life.”

CARE is a nonprofit advocacy group funded by the oil industry and diving and sportfishing groups.

In Texas, a decades-old reef program now includes 45 oil rigs and natural gas facilities toppled in place or cut in half under water. Doug Peter, a Texas state biologist, believes artificial reefs will be around for a long time.

“It’s an environment that man created . . . but all of the things on it are natural,” he said. “They just found a niche they could hang on to.”

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Artificial Reefs

Scores of artificial reefs off Southern California have sparked a sharp debate over man’s right to clutter the ocean floor. Artificial reefs, such as a Canadian warship to be sunk this month off San Diego, provide recreational and economic benefits, but critics wonder about the cost to marine life. A look at some of the reef areas:

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Source: California Dept. of Fish and Game

Graphics reporting by BRADY MacDONALD / Los Angeles Times