New homes for marine life are waiting in the Gulf. And the door’s wide open.
As the rest of the Florida Keys led a mad dash for lobster on Aug. 6, Monroe County Artificial Reefs Director Hanna Koch, Marathon diver Rachel Bowman and Finz Dive Center owner and captain Robert Trosset were combating winds, waves and current offshore from the Lower Keys to deploy the island chain’s next habitat support structures.
Using thrusters to precisely position a carrying barge, and a crane with a GPS beacon at its tip for pinpoint accuracy, crews dropped a series of 12 15-foot-tall windowed concrete pyramids and six smaller 8-foot pyramids, arranged in four division-sign-like formations around 40 feet deep. Then came the next challenge: diving in near-zero visibility to survey and confirm the placement of each individual structure.
The surfaces of the pyramids are studded with Florida limestone rock for texture, allowing for easy settlement of sponges, corals and other marine life. The pyramids feature wide-open tops, allowing an escape for larger visitors including turtles. And inside the majority of the larger pyramids are stacks of staggered concrete plates to provide yet another diverse structure for different species to call home.
They’re a product of Reefmaker, an Alabama-based company that builds, loads, transports and deploys the structures in a one-stop-shop operation.
“Reefmaker is a long-time player in this field, so we’re happy to be working with such a professional experienced vendor,” Koch told the Weekly. “This is going to be teeming with life, and I’ll be back out there in the next couple months to report back.”
If the county’s previous installations are any indication, that life could find its way to the new reef sooner rather than later. The first project installed under Koch’s direction, a reef made of stacked decommissioned power poles, saw visitors like cobia within three days of deployment. And in a flat, largely lifeless area that was home to just a handful of species before the reef, Koch’s team has documented more than 100 species, including fish, corals, seagrasses, turtles and sharks on the new reef since its deployment in November 2024.
That includes pings from acoustic tags in fish and sharks – and some preliminary data suggests visits from critically endangered smalltooth sawfish.
“Once we have permits, we’re going to put out acoustic devices at all the Gulfside network sites, so we can see how these tagged fish are moving among the different artificial reef sites and natural sites,” Koch said.
So far, the reefs appear to be living up to their purpose: using man-made structures to mitigate habitat loss and provide a network of nearshore-to-offshore sites to support the movement of maturing and migrating fish.
“One of the points of doing the different designs is to actually see if certain species have an affinity for certain designs,” said Koch. “Are some promoting greater levels of biodiversity? Are some more amenable for certain resident species versus migratory? We’ll be able to answer those questions.”
The installations are backed by $15 million in state funding, awarded to the county in 2023 and 2024. The first power pole reef (Gulfside 10 Mile Reef) cost $440,000, Koch said, while the three deployments in summer 2026 – known as the Gulfside 5, 8 and 9 Mile Reefs – totaled just under $1 million. Taken collectively, the projects represent the first major artificial reef deployments in the Keys since the sinking of the Vandenberg shipwreck in 2009.
The three new sites now include 156 specialized concrete structures to create 12 patch reefs across the three areas, with two more deployments set to go to bid later this year for deployment in summer 2027. Koch said she’s also hopeful for a smaller installation in nearshore waters off Marathon and Layton. She’s working on final permit conditions for what would be her first installation within the boundaries of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
More information, including coordinates for all the newly-installed reefs, is available at monroecounty-fl.gov/1325/artificial-reefs-program.
