Front of our dive center, there is a nice coral reef with many hard corals alive and some pink seafans. The reef is not deep, 10-15 meters maximum. The coral is on the side of the bay.
Deeper and in the middle of the bay, there is a mud bottom and some flat coral reefs.
First try of an artificial reef
During the covid pandemic, we have a lot of free time, so we decided to try to make some fishes and corals protections on the mud bottom.
We used some debris from the 2018 earthquakes.
At 15 meters deep, on August 2020, we installed the first small artificial reef.
On September 2020, we installed another small, and we discovered many cuttlefish eggs inside the first reef. Since, the eggs have hatched. Some different fishes were already lived in this new reef.
More and bigger artificial reefs
In January 2021, following the success of the first 2 reefs, two more imposing sets were installed near the first one.
Each time, we were surprised and happy to discover a lot of fish in our reefs, including schools of Platax, fusilliers, some Lionfish, Pufferfish, shrimps… Turtles can also frequent this set. Many seafan, sponge and corals grow on the structures.
The density of fish is impressive, as you can see in this short film. The density could change with the season, even if there are always may fish.
Then other structures were installed, until the raw material was exhausted. Now there is line of artificial reefs on the mud bottom: many fish, corals, sponge, nudibranch, seafan… are living there.
Since then, we continue to maintain these sets by diving on them from time to time.
One of the goals is to ensure that the structures do not fall into the muddy bottom.
During night dives, small frogfish were seen, nudibranchs, shrimps, crabs, parrotfish and a Green turtle.
