Escambia sinks over a million dollars into artificial reefs. The benefits keep coming.

Eilene Beard ran Scuba Shack/Wet Dream Charters in Pensacola for 40 years. Although she’s retired, she still loves the Gulf of Mexico and wants to do all she can to keep the environment that helped support her for so many years healthy and growing.

With that goal in mind, she donated $500,000 to Escambia County, designating that the money be used for artificial reef projects. She specifically asked that $100,000 of her donation be set aside for memorial reefs. It’s a program new to the county that allows donors to name reef modules after loved ones who are gone.

“Unfortunately, there are minds that just have not gotten the message, how important artificial reefs are,” Beard said. “They're ecologically important. They're financially important. They're great for tourism and just general recreation for the local public.”

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Beard’s donation will cover the cost of 43 memorial reefs. What makes Escambia’s memorial reef program unique is that thanks to Beard’s donation, those who wish to name a reef after a lost loved one will only have to cover the cost of deployment, which makes the process faster and less expensive.

“That gives us the advantage not only of having a less expensive reef to be deployed, but an almost immediate memorial to be created upon the receipt of the donation that reimburses the county for the deployment costs,” explained Escambia Marine Resources Manager Robert Turpin. “We can, just within a matter of a couple of days, get the name up on our website, so that people can people can gain that sense of comfort and peace that comes from providing a memorial for someone that, like me, spent your life out there on the water surfing, fishing, diving.”

The memorial reefs are concrete tetrahedrons. They’re substantial at 8 feet tall, 10 feet wide at the base and weighing about 2.5 tons.

Experts say marine life love the reefs because they have windows that allow fish to travel in and out and use them as a habitat. Limestone boulders embedded in the sides make it easy for organisms to attach and grow.

“Mother Nature adorns that with the creatures that become attached to it,” said Turpin, “and then it's also used for shelter and habitat and forage area for marine life such as fishes, crabs and lobsters, octopus. Little tropical fishes and reef fishes like groupers, snappers and treasure fish and amberjack.”

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In total, the county has earmarked $1,160,000 for three different reef projects, funds that come from several different sources. Besides private donations, the county is also tapping into a federally funded grant, as well as money from the BP oil spill to create and expand other reef projects.

The EscaRosa reef project is a joint effort between marine and environmental managers with Escambia and Santa Rosa counties and others that reflect how much people in both counties use and enjoy the same waterways.

Turpin says numbers show there are more motor vessels registered per capita in Santa Rosa County than in Escambia County and most Santa Rosa County boaters travel through Pensacola Pass to go fishing and diving in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Together, the two counties allocated a $60,000 federally funded grant obtained through Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to fund two patch reefs.

Patch reefs consist of one, 15-foot tall tetrahedron that is surrounded by half a dozen smaller ones, like the memorial reefs. The first two will go to the Escambia County Near Shore East Artificial Reef Site, and Turpin said the plan is to keep adding more as they can.

“The reefs that are deployed in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, off Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties are available to all the residents,” said Turpin. “By providing these regional artificial reefs, it allows us to work together, and we work more efficiently when we work together.”

Lastly, Escambia County is spending $1 million dollars of the Natural Resources Damages Assessment to add another 70 artificial reefs to the Eilene Beard Artificial Reef site, where they’ll join about 160 other NERDA funded patch reefs built with first round of funds.

These reefs consist of 15-foot tall concrete tetrahedrons and half of them will be deployed with an “eco-reef” enhancement on the inside meant to encourage the growth and diversity of marine life. The other half won’t have it and Turpin said the plan is to study any differences in their development to see if the “eco-reef” addition is worth the cost.

Reef habitats create growing economic benefit

The money spent on building and growing Escambia County’s artificial reef programs pays off in many ways, according to Turpin and others like Beard who worked in the marine industry.

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A 2014 study by the state of Florida that measured fishing and diving off Escambia County artificial reefs showed the annual economic benefit of fishing and diving was $150 million dollars and supported over 2, 200 jobs.

Turpin and Beard both say those numbers have steadily grown over the years and along with the economic impact, the environmental return on investment is also huge.

“Unfortunately, the topography in this area, and what basically is underneath the ocean out there, it is like the big Gobi Desert except for a few smatterings of coral reefs and or artificial reefs and anytime you put anything down, it instantly becomes another reef that supports more sea life," Beard said. "It supports more fisheries, more everything.”

If you’d like to visit or see where Escambia County’s diving and fishing reefs are located, visit the Artificial Reefs page at myescambia.com. There are links to a spreadsheet with locations, descriptions and coordinates, as well as water depth. There’s also a link that allows the reef locations to show up on Google Earth.

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Beard is grateful she could provide the donation to make more reefs possible and leave a lasting legacy.

“I just felt like I learned a very important lesson from my grandfather,” said Beard. “He says when you take from something you should always give back. Well, my livelihood came from the ocean and this is my way of honoring my grandfather in a way.”

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Escambia artificial reefs supporting marine life and Pensacola economy