THE EVOLUTION OF ARTIFICIAL REEFS

Reef Balls ^TM: How Hotels, Tourism Associations, Cruise Lines and Others Use Designed Artificial Reefs to enhance the environment, create beaches and create tourist assets.

Todd Ryan Barber, President, Reef Ball Development Group, Ltd., Chairman, Reef Ball Foundation, Inc, 6916 22^nd Street West, Bradenton, Florida, 34207 (tel 941-752-0169, E-mail reefball@reefball.com Website www.reefball.com, www.reefball.org)

Reef Balls are state of the art designed artificial reefs used primarily to restore ailing reefs or to create new reefs for ecological enhancement, fishing, scuba diving, beach erosion protection, and many other specific end use goals. Reef Balls have been used in over 4,000 projects worldwide with over 500,000 Reef Balls deployed. Reef Balls are the most widely used designed artificial reef system in the world. One of the fastest growing segments of the artificial reef market has been using reefs to enhance ecotourism.

There are a wide variety of projects using Reef Balls that fall within the boundries of enhanced tourism. Some examples include: Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Four Seasons Resort, Plantation PortaMari, and St. Marteen Nature Foundation Coral Propogation & Transplant Projects, Marriott Cayman Islands, Iberostar, Gran Domicus Hotel, Porto Progresso, City of Miami, and Hotel Mayan Palace Beach Restoration Projects. Reef Ball Foundation Ecotourist Reef Building Vacations (Dominica, St. Lucia, Turks and Caicos). Green Image projects from hotel associations like the Barbados Marine Trust. Underwater Scuplture parks such as Club Cozumel Carib in Cozumel. And PADI’s European Project Aware Reef Ball program which is now in 5 European countries and growing rapidly.

Mr. Barber will give a powerpoint presentation that highlights these and other examples of how one can increase ecotourism and benefit not only the environment but also the tourist assets of a community.

Keywords: Reef Ball, Reef Balls, Artificial Reefs, Designed Reefs, Coral, Reef restoration, mitigation, beach erosion, scuba, diving, fishing, reefball, artificial reef

To Be Presented at the Asia/Pacific Conference on Ecotourism 2003, Langkowi, Malaysia www.apeco2003.org October 22-26 2003.