NEWS FROM THE DELAWARE DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL
August 7, 2008
Vol. 38, No. 355
For more information contact Jeffrey Tinsman, Delaware Reef Program, Division of Fish and Wildlife, 302-739-4782 or Melanie Rapp, Public Affairs, 302-739-9902.
Delaware Reef Guide Now Available
Guide Provides Info for Anglers and Divers
Sport anglers and scuba divers can now set their GPS - global positioning systems - for an artificial reef off the Delaware coast. The list of twelve reef sites and their GPS coordinates is now available in the Delaware Reef Guide 2008 on DNREC's website, www.dnrec.delaware.gov. The guide also includes detailed information on each reef location, size, water depth and distance from port.
“The new guide lists the types of fish and small marine life, such as mussels, oysters and barnacles, that inhabit each reef site,” said Jeffrey Tinsman, environmental scientist with DNREC’s Division of Fish and Wildlife. “Delaware’s sites are some of the best locations for fishing and diving, because they provide the necessary habitat for small marine life and the reef fish that feed on them. The guide includes detailed information on our reef sites and helps make them more accessible to anglers and divers.”
Since 1995, Delaware’s artificial reef program has created 12 reef sites, eight in the Delaware Bay and four located in Atlantic waters, to improve fisheries habitat, increase marine biodiversity and provide fishing and diving opportunities.
“Creating a successful reef requires more than just placing miscellaneous materials at the bottom of the ocean or bay,” continued Tinsman. “We select and develop reef sites by targeting the marine life we hope to enhance or establish and constructing a habitat that will benefit them.”
Recycled materials have been effective in establishing a natural reef. Within a few weeks, blue mussels, sponges, barnacles, soft corals and other marine life attach to the materials, and in about a year, the reef will be fully productive, resembling natural habitat. Monitoring studies have shown that placement of durable, stable reef materials can result in a 400-fold increase in the amount of small sea life on the reef.
Some species of fish, including sea bass, tautog, triggerfish, spadefish and scup, remain close and feed on the reef. The voids and cavities of an artificial reef provide the perfect sanctuary for these reef fish and their young. Swift, open-ocean pelagic fish, such as bluefish, weak fish, croaker, and stripped bass, use the reef as a hunting ground to grab a quick meal of small fish.
Concrete culvert pipe and other concrete products are the primary materials used to create the reef sites in the Delaware Bay. They make ideal reefs because they are very stable, durable and similar to the structure of reef-building corals. Delaware’s four ocean sites include more than 9,000 tons of ballasted tire units and 86 decommissioned military ships and barges. Over the past year, eight vessels, including tugboats, commercial and military ships have been sunk in the four Atlantic reef sites.
Redbird Reef, one of Delaware’s two named reef sites, received a surge in development in 2001 when the first of 714 New York City“Redbird” subway cars were sunk there. Development of the site has been on-going, and with last week’s sinking of two vessels, the Swift, a commercial tugboat built in 1964 and formerly used in the Chesapeake Bay, and the 135-foot by 40-foot Navy barge YR-89, a total of ten tugboats and barges now reside there. In addition, the site holds 86 retired tanks and armored personnel carriers and 3,000 tons of ballasted truck tires. Redbird Reef, located 19 miles off the coast of Cape Henlopen, is Delaware’s largest reef site and now covers 1.3 square nautical miles of ocean bottom.
Redbird Reef has proven to be an excellent fishing location for black sea bass and summer flounder and remains a favorite site for many anglers, providing as many as 13,000 angler-trips each year.
The Delaware Reef Program is administered by the Fisheries Section of DNREC’s Division of Fish and Wildlife with primary funding provided through the Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration Program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Development of the sites began in 1995 as part of a comprehensive fisheries management effort. For more information, contact Jeff Tinsman at (302) 739-4782.
