Do artificial reefs improve habitat?
Top Nudibranch We don’t know! They certainly provide new habitat, but whether it is an improvement is not known. SPARS is trying to find out whether the Sidney Reef Ball reef did improve habitat. We do know that reefs provide the necessary habitat for many marine plants and animals, but other organisms rely on non-reef habitat such as the sand bottom that the SPARS reef was placed on. Creation of artificial reefs provides a trade-off between two types of habitat. For the reef SPARS is looking at, the trade-off was between sand/mud flat habitat (that is necessary habitat for eel grass, clams, sole and other flatfish, worms, and many others) and reef habitat (that is necessary habitat for plants and animals listed in our “Plants” and “Animals” side-bar topics, as well as many others).
