Britain's first artificial reef to be a surfers' paradise... but at what cost?

[Snowden]

Britain's first artificial reef to be a surfers' paradise... but at what cost?


By Claire Bates
Last updated at 5:00 PM on 17th July 2008

Boscombe Beach is already a popular site with surfers in the UK, despite only providing 77 days of good surf

Bournemouth is set to become the new surfing mecca of Europe, thanks to the first artificial surf reef to be constructed in the northern hemisphere.

The south coast city only has 77 good surfing days per year, according to the region's council. Despite this, ambitious sportsmen try to catch waves on 153 days each year.

The new reef, which will be placed 210m from shore, will send huge waves up to 75m high crashing into the sea near Boscombe Pier, doubling the number of good surf days and attracting twice as many visitors to the region.

However, the reef comes with a significant price tag. The original £1.4million estimate has doubled to £2.7million in just two years due to project delays and spiralling costs.

The reef was designed by ASR Ltd, a company founded by oceanographer Dr Kerry Black, who travelled the entire Pacific Rim to study 44 of the world's best surf breaks.

He said the reef would provide 'better quality breaks' even on calm days.

'Surfers like a waves that breaks where you can surf across the face. To do that, you need to break up the regular form of the beach and the reef does that for you,' the oceanographer said.

The webbing base and 55 geo-textile bags, which measure from 15-70m long, mimic the effects of a natural reef.

It acts as a ramp, pushing waves upwards, doubling their size and shaping them into good-quality surfing waves further from shore.

Work started on Wednesday at a secret location in Poole to create the bottom layer - a mat that will minimise the structure sinking into the sand.

A webbing base made out of straps will be attached and the first section of empty geo-textile bags will be tied together and sewn onto the base.

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The structure, the size of a football pitch, will be loaded by crane onto a barge and transported to the site where divers will help to install it.

The bags will then pumped full of sand dredged previously to create the reef, in strict sequence fed from a pump on the beach.

The sequence will be repeated twice more for the bottom layer before two larger sets of bags on the top layer are also pumped full of sand.

The design company have been quick to downplay any environmental impact the reef may have.

'The environmental implications are at worst, neutral,' a spokesman for ASR Ltd said.

'It’s likely that marine life will thrive on the reef and there will be no damaging effects to the beach.'

However, ASR Ltd are reportedly still dealing with problems with their last reef project in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand.

Although the reef has been declared compete several times, it is into its third year of construction and tweaking.

The Bay of Plenty Times reported ASR has replaced five split geo-textile bags so far and local surfers are disappointed by the quality of the waves.


Britain's first artificial reef to be a surfers' paradise... but at what cost? | Mail Online

[bhdean]

It doesn't sound like they are having much luck with their geo-textile bags that are supposed to be the reef.

[Anth]

Why not just sink an old ship in the area to use as the reef? Its been done before, it will cause the same effect, the sea creatures like it, divers like it and it gets rid of something that would normally cost millions to get rid of.

[Snowden]

Anth, common sense is at a premium. It's something you have in abundance and your government and mine sorely lack! Sadly, the common sense approach is never as attractive to either government as something that will cost the tax payers a lot of money. After all, it's not their money -- it's yours.

[conlor]

A lot to spend for the relatively few people who surf. There are better ways to spend money.

[jjvman]

Even if it gets "tweaked" to perfection, eventually, will the barnacles, etc. that grow on the bags render it less effective at a later date? It isn't so important when the reef is used solely to attract marine life or for divers to explore, but this could be a major problem in time. Also, it might not be as interesting to exploree as a sunken ship, so Anth has a good idea.