Lately, there’s been an increase in interest over the well-being of coral reefs. These marine habitats represent an estimated $2.7 trillion in ecosystem service value and support around 25% of all marine life after all. But we have already lost 50% of the world’s reefs at this point. And there appears to have been no specific global funding to help develop the protection and restoration of these reefs in the past.

Recognizing this, a coalition of partners from the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly created the Global Fund for Coral Reefs. With this fund, they hope to raise and invest $500 million (USD) to support programs that will increase the resilience of coral reefs.

That means you may soon see more construction requests for artificial reefs. These sorts of reefs are manufactured constructs designed to promote the growth of coral reefs and provide marine life with shelter. It’s a great way to secure a profitable tender and give back to the environment all at the same time.

But if you do decide to take on an artificial reef project, what can you expect?

You May See a Wide Variety of Structural Requests

Over the years, the innovation for building artificial reefs has only increased. People from all over the world have their own ideas on how to build reefs effectively. So when you do encounter such a project, you might find some unique structural requests. Here are just some of the more well-known ones you might end up with.

They May Be Complex Like a Habitat Skirt

If you win a bid for an artificial reef construction project from a governmental authority, your work may be fairly large and complex.

For instance, back in 2008, the Vancouver Convention Centre used governmental funds to include a habitat skirt worth $8.3 million. The first of its kind at the time, this project used 362 precast concrete slats. They were fit into 76 frames and arranged to look like a large five-tiered staircase. That extended the center’s shoreline by 477 m (1,564.96 ft) and added 6,122 m² (65,896.66 ft²) of marine habitat surface area.

That is no easy feat for a project that had never been done before! As one of the University of British Columbia’s blogs notes, this amount of space is equivalent to “the length of five Canadian football fields and the floor space of the entire White House.”

It’s also not the only government project thinking big. Further south, down in the United States of America (USA), in San Diego, the port there has started to install a sea wall. Designed to protect the edges of Harbor Island, the wall is expected to help restore the island’s marine ecosystem.

It makes use of a structure that consists of the Coastalock system, which interlocks hollow concrete units to create habitats for oysters, sea stars, algae, and a variety of other marine wildlife.

The port hopes to use 72 of the 3.5-tonne modules of this system to replace the island’s current riprap.

With those two projects in mind, you can see that certain artificial reef projects will involve a decent amount of construction material, some intricate design input, and a keen contractor eye to keep everything working smoothly.

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