A barren stretch of seafloor can look empty from above, but dropping the right structures onto it can quickly change what lives beneath the surface. That is what happened off Western Australia’s south-west coast after purpose-built artificial reefs were installed at Bunbury and Dunsborough in 2013. The projects used 30 concrete “Fish Boxes” at each reef, with every module weighing 10 tonnes and designed to create shelter, water movement and feeding habitat. According to Recfishwest, Western Australia’s recreational fishing representative body that helped deliver the artificial reef programme, only about a dozen fish species had been identified at the sites before deployment; three years later, more than 60 species had been recorded using the reefs.
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