Artificial reefs have been credited with supporting fisheries, protecting rare species, and attracting tourists that boost the economy. But, of course, like any story about the environment, it gets complicated both here in the Gulf and on Cambodia’s coast.
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TRANSCRIPT
As it turns out, you can toss just about anything onto the sea floor, and it’ll become an artificial reef. And in a pretty short time that reef will create a vibrant new habitat for all kinds of sea life.
Artificial reefs are one part of a human-made solution to a human-made problem… severe overfishing.
Whether that’s here on the Gulf Coast, where the iconic red snapper population was facing near collapse.
Sean Power: People think it's their constitutional right for people to go out and catch red their snapper.
Or in Cambodia, where an entire way of life for local fishermen is under threat.
It seems like a deceptively easy fix. Design a reef, with careful considerations to its size and shape. Or sink anything from discarded voting machines to a decommissioned ocean luxury liner.
NEWS CLIP: It became a cruise liner hosting US presidents and celebrities.it will now break a new record as the world's largest artificial reef,
I’m Carlyle Calhoun and you’re listening to Sea Change.
(Sea change music)
Artificial reefs have been credited with supporting fisheries, protecting rare species, and attracting tourists that boost the economy. And we’ll show you how. But, of course, like any story about the environment, it gets complicated both here in the Gulf, and on Cambodia’s coast.
We start in Alabama, a state that actually has one of the largest artificial reef programs in the world. Why Alabama of all places? Sea Change reporter Eva Tesfaye finds out.
That’s coming up after the break.
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I’m at a harbor in Theodore Alabama, just outside of Mobile. I wander across the wooden docks between fishing boats, to find Shane Traylor, a captain who just got back from a charter fishing trip.
EVA: Got anything good today?
SHANE: Well, we got a bunch of groceries
By groceries, Shane means fish. The ones he’ll cook for dinner. He’s standing at a filet table with water constantly running over it, cleaning the Sheepshead he just caught that morning.
Shane is in his 50s. He’s wearing a neck gaiter and a baseball cap.
SHANE: I'm just fileting the fish. So sheep’s head has really hard scales.
EVA: Mm-hmm.
SHANE: And a big rib cage. This is all rib cage, so I have to carve around all that stuff.
To get under the scales to the yummy parts of the fish is a lot of work, and Shane is at it the entire time we talk.
It’s all part of the job of running Bonafide Fishing Charters. For thirteen years, Shane’s been one of the many charter fishing captains on the Alabama coast who will take you out to fish for sport.
SHANE: I love everything about it. I really do. I love the process. I know that sounds crazy. But I like getting up in the morning. Brewing the coffee and it's dark, and nobody is awake
Shane tells me that these days, one of his favorite things to do, is to share his love of fishing.
SHANE: I think fishermen go through phases. You know, at first you just wanna catch one, and then you wanna catch a big one, and you wanna catch a lot.
And, um, you know, I'm kind of at that place now where and I wanna watch other people do it.
Shane often takes those other people - the groups who charter his boat - to artificial reefs where he knows they’ll be able to hook fish.
Here on the Gulf Coast artificial reefs are usually made out of concrete. But just about any hard structure you put in the water will start to attract sea life… from sunken boats to oil rigs.
Surprisingly, Alabama with its tiny coastline of just 53 miles– has one of the largest artificial reef programs in the world – there are more than 10,000 of them scattered in Alabama waters in the Gulf.
That number is rivaled only by Japan, a country with 350 times the amount of coastline, and a centuries old tradition of using manmade structures to attract fish.
And that’s the purpose of the artificial reefs in Alabama too, to support the fishery.
SHANE: I think we’d have a good fishery without ‘em. I think we have a great fishery because of them.
Shane and his colleagues in the charter fishing industry rely on these reefs to provide those coveted fish that tourists come from all over to catch. Inshore fish like trout and sheeps’ head and offshore fish like grouper and of course, the Gulf Coast favorite, red snapper.
The Gulf’s red snapper fishery is one of the country’s oldest. But the fish’s popularity almost led to its demise. Red Snapper was on the brink of collapse in the early 90s. decimated by overfishing.
But the fish population has been slowly climbing back up since. And today, advertisements for Alabama’s beaches call them the “Red Snapper Capital of the World.”
And many people I talked to credit artificial reefs for that.
SHANE: When they put a reef there, it gives everything a place to go. It gives 'em a home. And it's not only crucial for our way of life, but for the fish and everything that lives with them.
Artificial reefs aren’t just crucial for charter captains like Shane. You might not think of Alabama as a tourist-y place. But artificial reefs have been huge for the local businesses– Think seafood restaurants, seaside hotels, scuba diving, snorkeling…
Here’s an ad promoting Alabama’s beaches.
TOURISM VIDEO: Did you know the waters off of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Alabama are considered some of the richest in the country? This area is also home to one of the country's largest artificial fishing reefs. Come discover a new state of excitement when you reel in the big one on the Alabama Gulf Coast.
For the past fourteen years, tourist spending in Alabama has been steadily climbing, aside from a dip during COVID. In 2024, tourists spent $24 billion in Alabama, more than double what they spent a decade earlier. And nearly half of that was spent on the coast.
So how did Alabama become a world leader in artificial reefs?
The first thing to know is that most of the Gulf coast has a very sandy bottom with very few natural reefs. This habitat is great for shrimp, but it’s not so welcoming for reef fish like red snapper and grouper.
With a little ingenuity, Alabama fishers found a convenient solution to that. In the late 1950’s, they figured out that you could toss basically anything into the water and fish would flock to it.
Creating reefs from old junk really caught on. And by the 80s it was a bit of a free for all.
EVA: What’s the most interesting thing you’ve heard of being turned into an artificial reef?
JIM: I think tanks are probably the most interesting artificial reef.
SEAN: We found the 1972 Caprice Classic, a car.
SHANE: Does a sunken shrimp boat count?
DAVID: I've done Cobra helicopters…
SEAN: We've seen old washer machines tied together…
DAVID: …airplanes, all kinds of ships…
SEAN: …old voting machines tied together.
All that stuff does attract fish, but it’s not as effective or environmentally friendly as designing artificial reefs from scratch, which is actually a pretty big business in this state.
I head to Orange Beach to meet one of Alabama’s most prolific builders of artificial reefs, David Walter. His company is Walter Marine.
David’s reefs can be found in coastal waters across the United States. In fact, he’s so well known that he and his family used to have their own reality tv show called “Reef Wranglers.” It aired on the weather channel back in 2013.
REEF WRANGLERS:
NARRATOR: Here comes David.
WORKER: Dude, I thought you said he was going for the day. Dude, look.
DAVID: Dang nabbit! What do you think I pay you guys for?
WORKER: The one time I decided to cut up at the yard. Dave shows up.
DAVID: I expect better from you. I understand, Roger. You know better than that. We're supposed to have that Dead Man's Island project loaded on the boat and ready to go.
But the hard-headed no-nonsense boss in Reef Wranglers is not the David I meet.
CONSTRUCTION AMBI STARTS UNDER
I find an older, softer-spoken man - walking with a cane because he recently broke his femur.
DAVID: I can walk. I’m a little slow, but I can walk.
David is waiting for me when I pull up at Walter Marine’s outdoor construction site. We’re 20 minutes away from where Shane runs his charter in Theodore, on the other side of Mobile Bay.
Cranes and trucks move noisily – between rows of artificial reefs. They build these on land before dropping them into the water.
START FADING DOWN CONSTRUCTION AMBI
David fell into reef making in the 80’s - back when people were putting whatever they could find into the water. At the time, David owned a shipyard. He was trying to figure out what to do with an old shrimp boat and a fisherman suggested David turn it into an artificial reef.
DAVID: And I didn't even know what an artificial reef was. And so they explained it to me and I said, well, sure I'll do that. So that's how I got started and it just kept growing from that
Then, in 1997, his business got a boost when the state started limiting what you could put in the water as an artificial reef. The new regulations allowed pretty much only steel, concrete and rocks. Because of environmental concerns, gone were the days where you could just throw voting machines into the water and fish off of them.
That’s when David turned reefmaking into an art, by designing different types of reefs for different uses. Not just fishing, but also for snorkeling and restoring underwater habitats… like the ones we pass by made of tiered large concrete plates, with small jagged rocks embedded on each level. It kind of reminds me of a giant seafood tower, like what you would see on ice at a fancy restaurant.
DAVID: we developed a complex artificial reef, which has places for little fish to get in there and hide. And it just, it just amazed me how the reef just came alive with little fish and all kinds of different animals that live on reefs
We pass by other reefs – shaped like pyramids – with large holes for fish and other sealife to swim into… and also out of.
DAVID: You'll see that there's a hole at the top, that funny looking hole at the top, that's the turtle escape. In case a turtle accidentally would get in the reef, because turtles are not real smart, they will wedge themselves under something and take a nap. Well, if the reefs doesn't have any way for a turtle to get out, it's gonna get trapped in there.
David’s reefs are in high demand. He sells around 2000 a year.
One reason is the state of Alabama makes it super easy for private individuals to put artificial reefs in the water. They encourage it, really. That’s what sets Alabama’s artificial reef program apart from other states.
DAVID: Beauty of Alabama, I can call today, have a permit and go out tomorrow. And nobody else got that kind of thing.
And let me tell you why fishermen love that. They don’t have to share the coordinates of their reefs publicly. So they can have their own little private fishing spot until someone else finds it.
A whopping 80-percent of Alabama’s reefs are privately owned. That’s thousands of reefs that the state didn’t have to pay for or put in the water.
So, that’s how Alabama became a world leader in artificial reefs. And they make Alabama’s coast a great place to catch fish, which has, in turn, boosted the tourism economy.
MUSIC/PAUSE
Alabama’s huge artificial reef program has also made it a great place to study artificial reefs and what they’re doing to the ecosystem. Because while they boost tourism and enjoy wide support, these reefs do change the ecosystem.
And to see that up close, you need to take a dive underwater.
Splash sound effect into robot video sound
I’m watching a video of hundreds of fish swarming an artificial reef made from an old cargo container.
SEAN: all those hundreds of fish you see are red snapper.
I’m in Sean Powers’s office. He’s the director of the Marine and Environmental Sciences department at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. The mechanical buzz you’re hearing is the ocean robot that’s filming the reef to monitor fish populations.
FADE DOWN UNDER NEXT LINE
SEAN POWERS: When you see a shark swim through there, they will all grab and seek the cover of the reef.
If not for the cargo container, Sean says we would have been looking at mostly empty sea water. Maybe a few little shrimp crawling along the Gulf’s rippled sandy bottom. Now it’s teeming with fish.
SEAN: So each of those reefs we've estimated holds about a hundred to 125 red snapper. You can see there's not, in this image, there's not a whole lot other than red snapper, but if you look way above, you can see some amberjack and some trigger fish.
Sean says there’s a couple of reasons fish are attracted to these artificial reefs. One is that – after a couple of years– algae and barnacles grow providing food for the fish. The other reason is the reefs provide safety from sharks and other bigger fish that want to eat them.
SEAN: So not only can they hide from predators, but they can also feel more comfortable about eating, so they grow faster. The potential problem with it is once a fisherman knows that structure is there, it could also make the fishermen much more efficient.
So artificial reefs make it easier for fishermen to catch fish… and yeah, that’s great for the fishing industry and tourism but it raises a larger question:
Are the artificial reefs actually increasing the fish populations or… just bringing them to where they’re easier to catch?
The answer depends on where you place the reef and how easy it is for fishermen to access. That’s according to Sean’s research.
SEAN: in general, reefs are net production off Alabama.
Meaning that they produce more fish than what fishermen catch.
SEAN: But if they get heavy fishing pressure like those reefs close to the coast, then it's probably not net production. It's just making fishermen more efficient.
That’s what Sean is worried about. So his research these days is focused on where to best place artificial reefs off Alabama’s coast. That includes installing some farther offshore, where they’re harder for fishermen to reach. And then also building some inshore that offer protection for smaller younger fish.
SEAN: The one way to make sure you’re more on the production than the attraction side is to have little fish use your habitat.
PAUSE/MUSIC
Another impact of artificial reefs is that they make things harder for shrimpers. If a shrimping boat accidentally trawls over one, it could destroy its equipment. That makes some areas functionally off limits to shrimpers.
Remember, these fish wouldn’t be here on the empty sandy bottom if it wasn’t for the artificial reefs. Shrimp would be here.
It’s a transition from one ecosystem to another. And it’s a transition humans are creating.
SEAN: It's a value decision because the public and the state resource agencies and even the federal agencies have decided that transition is worth more to the public. Now that worth could be dollars, that worth could be enjoyment. But yeah, we are altering the ecosystem, and that's what humans do. They alter the ecosystem.
That choice comes with winners and losers. When it comes to artificial reefs in Alabama, the shrimpers are the ones losing.
And those who love reef fish like red snapper, are definitely in the winning category.
SEAN: People I think believe it’s their constitutional right for them to be able to go out and catch red snapper.
To be clear, The right to catch red snapper specifically is not enshrined in the Alabama constitution. But the right to hunt and fish is.
Outside restaurant ambi into door opening sound
I make one more stop on the Alabama coast – at a cozy little oyster bar in Mobile, known for serving locally caught seafood. It’s called the Hummingbird’s Way, and it’s run by Chef Jim Smith, the second reality tv star I’ve met reporting this story. You might recognize him from season 14 of Top Chef.
TOP CHEF:
JUDGE: Jim, please tell us what you've made.
JIM: Certainly. I've taken a lightly seared shrimp, served with smoked Turkey wing and smoked pork consomme. This challenge means a lot to me. Uh, you know, embracing southern food in a way that doesn't commodify it in a kind of caricature kind of way is really important to me.
But being on Top Chef is just one of Jim’s accolades. He has served as the executive chef of the state of Alabama and the chair of its seafood commission.
We sat down early in the morning, before he needed to get in the kitchen to prepare for the restaurant’s dinner service.
Chef Jim says his menu wouldn’t be the same without artificial reefs, especially the snapper. He likes to serve it with spiced red curry, mussels, peanuts and herbs.
JIM: There was a time, being a chef like 10 or 12 years ago where there was a chance that, you know, we could not get red snapper locally just because the populations had been so severely decimated through overfishing and poor fishery management
But now, red snapper is thriving. Last year (2025), the University of South Alabama recorded the highest population in over a decade in Alabama waters.
JIM: from our, our little stretch of shoreline, it really shows what the sort of artificial reef production can do for species to help a species bounce back that's in trouble.
Now, to be clear, there were probably a few different reasons for red snapper bouncing back. According to Sean Powers, the scientist, more localized management and setting catch limits, are among them. But artificial reefs definitely helped.
So, it seems coastal Alabama’s new status as the artificial reef capital of the US has been mostly positive. The fishery is thriving. And so is tourism. And, in part, that’s thanks to the concrete and steel lurking beneath the surface.
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MIDWAY:Go half way around the world from Alabama, and the artificial reef story is still about overfishing. But unlike red snapper's recovery in the Gulf, fisheries here are still in deep trouble.
In Southeast Asia, there is an ongoing battle between traditional fishermen and illegal trawling boats that scoop up the vast majority of fish in these Pacific waters.
Reporter Leila Goldstein looks at how Cambodian fishing communities are using artificial reefs to fight back. That story after the break.
MIDROLL 2
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Off the south coast of Cambodia, is Koh Sdach… or in English, King Island. Just two miles long, it’s home to craggy beaches and palm trees. Along the coast, people have built a whole community of houses and shops on wooden docks.
[Walking to the inn ambi]
A short walk along one of those docks brings me to a small guesthouse called the
Seahorse Inn.
[More dock ambi if needed in section with Sea]
Sorn: Welcome to my homestay.
Leila: Thank you.
I meet the owner, Sorn Srehn. He’s really into Seahorses. They’re rare, so he says spotting one on a dive feels like finding treasure. The walls of his guest house are decorated with kitschy sea horse figurines and pillows. And photos of underwater life he took while diving. He proudly points out a favorite snapshot of a rare sponge.
Sorn: This is a Neptune Cap sponge. It's a very rare, very endangered. Nearly extinct.
Classmates nicknamed him Sea because of his passion for ocean life.
Sea is also the deputy commune chief of King Island--like a deputy mayor. And one of his jobs is to oversee conservation efforts… like picking up trash from the beach and organizing community meetings with fishermen.
Sorn: I'm a local islander and I've been born and raised here, so I think it's really important to keep our fishing village, the spirit of fishing.
Sea knows a lot about the spirit of fishing on King Island. His father was a fisherman, and like others here, he woke up early each morning to head out on his boat to support his family.
Sorn: He had to get up like. Two, 3:00 AM and went to the sea, dropped the net and wait few hour before, collect the net back and collect the shrimp.Yeah. And then come back home around the evening. Depends on catch. We keep some for eat and most of them we sell.Local fishermen use small-scale methods and gear, like handline fishing, gill nets, and fishing traps handmade with rattan and wooden sticks.
They return in the evening to unload their catch of mackerel, octopus or squid. What isn’t reserved for dinner is sold at the local fish market to wholesale buyers and transported to cities in Cambodia.
Sea says around half of the islanders work in the fishing industry.
But their livelihoods are at risk. And that’s because of illegal trawling that’s become rampant off the coast of Cambodia. Illegal because it takes place in shallow waters, close to the shore where trawling is outlawed.
If you’ve never seen a trawler, it’s a type of boat that scrapes the bottom of the ocean with large nets, scooping up shrimp, cuttlefish and crabs.
Sea says small scale fishermen complain about how their catches have declined over the years.
Sorn: Around here, we still have the fishery to catch, but it's less than before compared to like 5, 10, 15 years ago. This is what I have from the fishermen, especially the small scale family.
Sea is my introduction to fishermen on King Island, including Lorn Lay. Lay worked as a fisherman for decades, but quit, in part because he says the fish populations here have been decimated. He talked to me through a Khmer language interpreter.
Lay: [Khmer quote]
He said, at times there’s not even enough fish to sell to tourists, because trawlers will do whatever they can get away with.
Lay is retired now, and he sold his boats, passing them on to younger fishermen. He hopes they’ll continue the local traditions.
Recent government data reveals that more than two thirds of the catch coming from Cambodia’s largest coastal provinces is caught by trawlers.
Trawling boats capture fish for sale, but they also destroy vital parts of ecosystems, haphazardly dragging up all kinds of sea creatures and vegetation along the way. To evade law enforcement, they often operate in the middle of the night.
Flynn (documentary): We’re turned off all the lights. It’s been a game of cat and mouse as the trawlers turned off their lights and we’ve chased after them every time they’ve turned them back on.
That’s Gerry Flynn, in the documentary Chaos on the Coast. Gerry is a journalist for the environmental outlet Mongabay. For the past five years he’s reported on environmental crimes in Cambodia.
I called Gerry to hear about his investigation on illegal trawling.
He told me about going on a night patrol with locals who were trying to catch trawlers in the act, two miles off the coast of Cambodia.
[Gerry ambi if needed in this section]
Flynn: At one point we had to make some really evasive maneuvers, because, um, one of the trawlers came right at us. It, it turned around and effectively looked like it was trying to ram us. It really highlighted the risks that these communities are having to take just to try and protect their livelihoods.
Confrontations between local fishermen and trawlers in the region have led to injuries and even death. In one case in 2015, a Cambodian fisherman died following a collision with a Vietnamese trawling boat. Locals alleged the fisherman was beaten and killed by the trawling boat crew members.
And Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated fishing, known as I-U-U fishing, continues on. Gerry says that’s because the government isn’t putting enough resources into patrolling these areas. Cambodian authorities did not respond to requests for comment.
Flynn: If you look at the size of the trawling boats, I mean, these are often vessels that cost, you know, upwards of a hundred thousand US dollars, you know, very large, heavy duty things. Whereas unfortunately, a lot of the time the government rangers responsible for preventing IUU fishing, um, are in the equivalent of a bathtub.
Gerry told me that it’s hard to even know where all of the catch from Cambodian trawlers ends up. He says that some of what's caught is sold at sea to other boats on their way to Thai and Vietnamese ports. And the indiscriminate collection of damaged and juvenile fish caught in their nets is often purchased by fishmeal and pet food producers. That leaves the small-scale fishermen with very few options:
Flynn: For a lot of the fishers that we spoke to, the only real viable alternative is going to be to leave. So a lot of people are basically waiting to see how long they can last, in the job that they've done their whole lives, which, uh, is pretty sad.
More than a third of coastal fishing households live in poverty, double the national average. So what’s a good solution to such a huge problem?
King Island is trying something new to fight back against the destructive, illicit industry: a technique that has the potential to stop trawlers in their tracks. The solution they’ve found is actually pretty low-tech.
Plunking down cement blocks to obstruct the path of trawling boats. These blocks are like artificial reefs - they’re manmade structures strategically placed in the sea. But they are specifically designed as anti-trawling blocks …their main purpose is to get in the way of trawling boats.
The trawler’s huge nets dragging on the sea floor get caught on these heavy structures, ripping them up and damaging the mesh. Trawlers learn to avoid these areas to preserve their pricey gear.
An artificial reef project in nearby Kep Province has been up and running since 2018. And they have evidence that the cement structures have successfully warded off trawlers.
Thap: Because I'm on the island and, uh, the wave seems to be a bit loud, so let me know if you cannot hear me well.
I call up Rachana Thap, who’s sitting by the shore of Koh Ach Seh Island, where she works. She leads the organization Marine Conservation Cambodia.
Thap: My title is, executive director, but I prefer not being titled at all, if you get what I mean.
Rachana is being modest. She got involved in the early stages of this artificial reef project, after first interning for the organization. And now, nearly ten years later, she’s running the show.
Thap: When I came here in 2016, I could not sleep at all. Like at nighttime you could feel like the vibration from the trawling activity every night. And we're talking about like more than 20 trawlers every night.
Rachana says there was little sign of marine life near the island because of illegal fishing.
Thap: You could see that the coral was bleached and some of the coral were like recently killed and a lot were dead. And there were like no presence of sponge.
The NGO has since built 1,000 underwater structures all along Cambodia’s coastline. The project is part of a one-hundred million dollar effort mostly financed by the Asian Development Bank to restore Cambodia’s nearshore fisheries across the coast.
Data collected by Marine Conservation Cambodia shows that trawlers have been avoiding areas where the structures were deployed.
But that’s not all. This organization designed their structures not just to stop illegal trawling, but also to serve as artificial reefs that promote all sorts of marine life.
Rachana’s team builds their blocks underwater, with divers stacking cement beams like Lincoln Logs to form structures with plenty of surface area to latch on to and crevices for fish to swim around.
The design encourages the growth of molluscs, sponges and other species that make the area more hospitable for other life.
On Rachana’s very first dive to view growth on the blocks, she didn’t know what she might see. What she witnessed may not have been exciting to an untrained eye.
Thap: the first thing that we saw was, um, the algae. We know that it's working because the algae feed on the fish, the fish feed on the algae.
And that was the first sign that a new habitat was forming.
Since then, Rachana has done hundreds of dives. She’s seen the species around the blocks continue to multiply. And her team is especially encouraged by the growth of seagrass meadows that had nearly been destroyed. Today, they are munched on by hungry sea turtles.
Thap: It changes every time you go underwater and every time you go look at the blocks. Like, uh, one seasons you could see like the block full of sponges. so many beautiful sponges like red, orange, pink colors.
Most exciting of all for Rachana is when coral actually starts to grow on the cement blocks. The first time she saw that, she knew she had many reasons to keep doing this work.
Thap: I see there's like many, many life can be depend on this block structure. We don't need any, you know, difficult or hard work. We just give it time for the ocean to restore back itself.
From where she works in Kep province, Rachana has spotted pink dolphins and dugongs popping up around the blocks. And she imagines a future where locals can make a living again, fishing or bringing tourists snorkeling and scuba diving on Cambodia’s coast. These communities are up against a lot, but she’s seen up close how the ocean can rebound.
Back on King Island, the block project is just two years old, too early to know the full impact it’s having on the local fishing community.
Sitting on his wooden motor boat - painted a bright orange - longtime fisherman Choeurn Hong tells me that he used to make a living from fishing.
Hong: [Khmer quote]
But now he takes tourists out to see coral reefs. He tells me he’s counting on two things to make sure that families here will be able to survive.
Hong: [Khmer quote]
That tourism will continue to grow and that there will be enough fish to catch for years to come. There’s no guarantee–there’s still pervasive illegal fishing. But the concrete block project on King Island is a start. And Hong is hopeful that these simple blocks, dotting the coast of his homeland, will help preserve a way of life for his community.
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No one is calling artificial reefs a panacea to all of the world’s over fishing challenges. That is a vast and critical problem. And there are always complications when people try to reshape nature for our benefit. Like, prioritizing Red Snapper fishermen over shrimpers. With artificial reefs, we are putting our human thumb on the scale… as always.
But the overall progress? It’s undeniable.
As simple, and sometimes as strange as it sounds - plunking structures of all shapes and sizes into the water can help bring overfished waters back to equilibrium, support endangered species and sustain fishermen and their families.
OUTRO
Thanks for listening to Sea Change! This episode was hosted by me, Executive Producer Carlyle Calhoun, and reported by Eva Tesfaye and Leila Goldstein. It was edited by Johanna Zorn, with additional help from Rosemary Westwood, Michael McEwan and Aubri Juhasz. The episode was fact-checked by Michael McEwan. Sound design by Kurt Kohnen and Our theme music is by Jon Batiste. Special thanks to Irina Zhorov for research assistance. Check out her article in the show notes to learn more about Alabama’s booming business of artificial reefs.
Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. And to help others find our podcast, hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
We’ll be back in two weeks.
