Artificial Reef Research in Broward County 1993-2000: A Summary Report

Spieler, Richard

For the Broward County Board of County Commissioners Department of Planning and Environmental Protection Biological Resources Division. Broward County Department of Planning and Environmental Protection(DPEP) and Nova Southeastern University (NSU) have been collaborating on artificial reef research for the past seven years. This paper gives a brief overview of ten completed studies from 1993-2000. These studies entailed approximately 1000 hours of artificial reef construction, 2000 hours of SCUBA diving, 1300 hours of boat time and 1 000 hours of data analysis. A detailed discussion of the results has been, or will be, published elsewhere (Gilliam et al., 1995; Sherman et al., 1999; Gilliam, 1999; Sherman, 2000; Sherman et al., in press a, b). In addition, detailed reports of the individual studies are available from DPEP (Spieler,1995a,b; 1998a,b,c; 2000). The goal of our studies is to examine the functional attributes of artificial reefs as they relate to physical and biological characteristics of the Broward County marine environment. These attributes and characteristics include: species and community recruitment dynamics; attractants; volume; profile; complexity; void space; deployment depth; larval abundance; and seasonality. A number of these aspects have been examined elsewhere, but to the best of our knowledge, the project as a whole is unique in Florida. The project has been undertaken with the express purpose of determining the optimal design criteria for artificial reefs to enhance recreational fishing and other marine resources of Broward County.