Has anyone visited the "Reef Balls" at the Sand Dollar recently?

Have any interesting fish or critters taken up residence?

How about posting a couple of current photos.

Are more being placed elsewhere around Bonaire?

Bill

Our reef ball is #11. Someone during the summer sent us a picture of it with our name and number on a tag on the ball. A scorpion was inside standing watch!

I'm interested to see if the reef balls work as intended but I imagine that will require a few years wait. Is there successful use of them elsewhere? I just hope they don't wind up with the same result as the discarded tires artificial reef fiasco, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Reef

Anybody know more about this who can shed some light on why reef balls are more likely to be effective? Are they anchored in place somehow, or just placed on the sand? Thanks for any info.

Nathalie...Excellent article & very interesting. Sometimes when we try to interfere & make things better it has the opposite effect!

T-Shirt Divers John and Sue: Thanks for the information on Reef Ball #11. I wonder if the scorpion fish is a now permanent resident or if was just passing through. It might be fun for someone to log sightings of various fish and critters-of-interest at the various balls and post them to BT Talk. I hope to spend a week in Bonaire next May and will make a point of looking for a scorpion at RB-11.

Vince: I’m no expert but I would imagine that the concrete balls will be more likely to remain near where they are placed than the rubber tires and hopefully the balls are non-toxic. On the other hand they do have a large surface area relative to their mass and I suspect that a major hurricane with pounding surf might move them around more than a little -- especially the case as they are close to shore in shallow water.

I guess that time will tell as with the tires at Osborne Reef. In a sandy area it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see the balls end up completely buried due to normal wave action but I’m not so sure at Bonaire.

Bill

Bill, I had to click on your profile...just to see

There are a lot of "artificial reefs" that end up doing more damage than good. I think it depends on when they were "implemented," and who funded them. After doing some Internet research (not that all I read was credible), but it seems that with the Osborne project, they needed to dump all those tires, and well, who knows what went on behind closed doors to get the deal done.

I think in today's climate, it's harder to put stuff in the ocean without getting approval from all of the concervency organizations. I know the one's I've dove locally (the YUKON sunk a few years ago off Wreck Alley in San Diego now has the most amazing sea life growing on it), and the kelp reforestation I've been lucky to have been involved with along the coast of California.

But then again, there is still soooooo much we don't know...it's such a fine ecosystem and we certainly haven't been studying it long enough to know what "full" cycles in some areas are.

I did find this on the one's on Bonaire.

http://www.reefball.org/album/bonaire/monitoring/index.html

I guess they are smoother than some of the other balls made, and they don't have the coral adapter plugs that the other balls have in other areas. Someone on island was monitoring them. I don't remember who it was though.

I think Jerry the naturalist has been watching the balls. Dee Scarr will be monitoring them when she is in Bonaire this winter while working on her new project; save the coral.

Cyn: Thanks for the link. It was a nice update through March, 2006; however, as I understand it the balls weren't on site until January 2006. If that is correct, then our latest update is only 2 months after being placed and I wouldn't expect much. Now, almost November it is perhaps time to see some life moving into the locations.

Anyhow my interest is in trying to take pictures of fish and critters at shallow depths. The advantage of the reef balls is that I can find and explore them quite easily and probably do so either day or night.

T-Shirt Divers John and Sue: Yes, I went into the archives and found their names mentioned. I couldn't locate an E-mail address for Dee but last night I sent an E-mail to Jerry asking if he could update the BT snorklers on current status of the Reef Balls.

Yes, we would love to get some photos to for an update...we are interested since the surface texture was off to see how much slower the growth will be compared to our other projects in the Carribean. I will be diving next week on our Reef Balls in the Cayman Islands that were planted about the same time and I would like to make a comparision.

Todd Barber
Chairman, Reef Ball Foundation

We snorkeled them many times in our 9 days there. Seems a small green eel has taken up in one of them. Unfortunately, I didn't realize they were numbered or I would have paid better attention!. We did take some photos, so I'll see how they turned out and post if they are any good.

Tami:
-Thanks for your update. I am looking forward to your pictures. I hope that you got a few of the small green eel.
-You didn't happen to see a scorpion fish hanging out at one of the balls [#11] did you?
-Maybe John and Sue can upload the picture they have of the number/name tag so that the rest of us will know what to look for.
-I plan to be in Bonaire the first week of May and will try to get and post some pictures.
Bill