New homes for Maryland’s coastal sea life!
I know I say this a lot, but this is like the coolest thing ever. That’s the homepage for the Maryland Artificial Reef Initiative, or MARI, a plan to help nourish fish and other sea life populations off the Maryland coast by creating artificial reefs. Artificial reefs work by forming a structure for sea plants and animals to grow on in places where natural reefs have been depleted. Eventually, a natural structure forms around the artificial reef, so it’s kind of like giving fish and plants their own hotel rooms to stay in while their new homes are being built!
But what’s extra cool about the project is the kind of material that they’re using to make the reefs. The reefs are going to be made out of urban debris donated by cities including Washington, DC, which donated parts of the old Woodrow Wilson Bridge, and NYC, which is donating old abandoned subway cars to the effort. Seriously, how great is it that Ocean City fish are going to be making their homes in old NY subway cars? That’s pretty awesome, if you ask me.
Anyway, so I’ve been reading up on artificial reefs on the very informative wiki page, and it seems like they have pluses and minuses, and there have been some kind of unpleasant incidents in the past where tires and other reef parts have gotten loose. It seems like a pretty complicated issue. I’m just hoping that this works out well for the animal populations off the coast that could be doing a lot better than they have been lately.