YOU wouldn’t want to have been four kilometres at sea from Shoalhaven Heads and 30 metres down on the weekend.
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It was nothing personal but that was when the NSW Department of Primary Industries dropped 460 tonnes of concrete straight down to the seabed.
It wasn’t an attempt to get rid of unwanted waste for a construction site, but the first stage in building an artificial reef for the benefit of local marine life and the benefit of locals who enjoy a spot of fishing.
Kiama MP Gareth Ward said the project cost $900,000.
“For that we got 20 purpose-built concrete modules, each five metres high and weighing 23 tonnes,” Mr Ward said.
The modules were loaded onto a barge at Port Kembla on Friday.
“The reef will make Shoalhaven Heads the latest recreational fishing hotspot along the coast, and will be able to withstand a one-in-a-hundred year storm event.”
Mr Ward said the new reef was more than double the volume of first artificial reef dropped off Sydney in 2011.
“The reef will create a new fish habitat for a range of species. First to make it a home will be bait fish, which in turn will attract larger species such as snapper and kingfish.”
