SARASOTA (WSNN) – The Sarasota Yacht Club participates in a small effort to help Florida’s ecosystem in a big way.
Ocean Habitats, a non-profit helping marine habitats, installed 10 Mini Reef Plus units underneath Sarasota Yacht’s Club’s docks on Thursday morning. The four-feet by three-feet units help filter about 70,000 gallons of water a day, and grow about 1,000 fish, crabs, and shrimp per year.
While mini in size, Sarasota Yacht Club’s Commodore, Hugh McIlrevey says it’s a “huge initiative we are so proud to be a part of.”
It’s a solution to a problem that began years ago when Florida was developed.
“Coastal habitats were destroyed because we built cities,” Ocean Habitats’ Founder, David Wolff, said. “A sea wall is not as productive as a bunch of mangrove trees.”
Those trees help filter the water. Ocean Habitats’ Founder, David Wolff, says that’s where the problem lies; in the filtering system.
Much like our kidneys, the mini reefs help filter out the bad toxins or organisms in the water.
“Helping replace some of the animals that are lost at like red tide events,” Wolff said. “Makes an area like underneath a dock, which is just wasted space, more productive.”
The future of the docks?
“Around a year from now when they’re fully developed with animals attached to them, they’ll be filtering 700,000 gallons of water in a day, every day that are not being filtered. today,” Wolff said. “Obviously there’s a lot of water in the bay; we’re not cleaning all of it, but 700,000 is better than zero.”
McIlrevey is looking forward to what’s in store.
“Every day, freshwater, and rejuvenated sea life will come back into this amazing Sarasota Bay,” McIlrevey said.
“The mini reef is not going to solve all our problems, but at least it’s a step forward that helps along with hundreds of other things people are doing, which is what has to happen to solve a problem the size that we have,” Wolff said.
You have to start somewhere.
Wolff says there are already nearly four thousand Mini Reefs in Florida and 23 other states. So, this amounts to nearly 150 billion gallons of water filtered and more than 6.6 million fish, crabs, and shrimp are grown.
