The building of artificial reefs

The first ever artificial underwater habitat in the Philippines will be a bench mark for Biri Initiative, an underwater park that will generate tourism.

April 5, 2024

Locals are brought in to help manufacture the Biri-Buds

Help enhance the income of the local village people bringing employment to many and eventually providing greater fish stocks.

Fees for diving in the area will go towards policing the Marine Protected Area and for funding marine education, in local schools and colleges; beach and island clean ups and other initiatives.

The BIRI Initiative (Building Innovative Reefs Independently) in the Philippines is an independently funded and managed organisation.

Promoting marine awareness in multiple localities and backed up by marine education and research programmes.
Along with their restoration work building and installing artificial reefs BIRI initiatives range from cleaning up beaches to sticking it to Crown of Thorns by cleaning them up too. Overall BIRI is seeking to raise community awareness of the importance of local marine issues, and especially in a local economic sense, to help attract eco-tourism.

One way they get locals involved is by hosting students to spend a week or two in the ocean studying their local, marine protected environment where they learn to dive at the same time as learning the fundamentals of conservation protection: basic surveying techniques; data collection; and grid mapping methods. BIRI makes available to them their own findings, data and observations.

The artificial reef building initiative is deployed in areas where over fishing, illegal fishing and bad marine practices such as dragging anchors over coral, has damaged the marine environment. Installing these reef structures promotes habitat restoration and they’re proving their tangible benefits for tourism.

Measuring success
Success in the short and long-term is being evaluated by an ongoing monitoring programme based on fish abundance, fish sizes, species richness, and species spatial distribution. Data collection for this evaluation is done on a macro scale with photo/video surveys to assess the marine context for management purposes while the fine-scale data required for scientific research is collected using Underwater Visual Census (UVC) monitoring techniques and transect mapping.

BIRI started rolling out ‘reef buds’, rather than large structures in 2013 after finding the smaller alternative could be deployed with less cost and more practicability. They called them Biri Buds. Now, after four projects and four years of experience they decided it was time to channel their efforts into larger and even more productive projects.

Divers place Biri-Buds to create new reef structures

Project 250

In a marine protected area of 1000 square metres in the near shore waters of Biri Island in Northern Samar, Philippines, a plan is being implemented this year to recover loose coral fragments from the seabed and plant them on 150 Biri Buds and on 100 small and large cages made up of iron rebar.
The objective is to create an underwater habitat though technically it is also a park with an entrance gate, park benches, baskets for taking trash, statues, ponds with ducks and fish, flowers, a holy cross, even goal posts, all created from concrete and iron. The aim is for it to be aesthetically pleasing for divers at the same time as becoming a wonderful niche and unique place.

Longevity in reef buds has a short but effective history of technology driven by eco-friendly concrete and engineered structures designed to last centuries.

Marine biologists were brought in to research the quality of the corals within the protected marine area, and storm produced fragments of the three fastest growing species of coral ( Elkhorn, Staghorn and Finger corals) were collected from the shallow reefs. The shallow reef environment was found to be highly dynamic, with corals recruiting to the reef, growing and dying. A total of 13 corals are being used.

Homer Hernandes a marine biologist conducted seminar/briefing on coral transplantation and reef rehabilitation prepared the tools and materials for trial-run coral transplantation, and in March this year, we transplanted 165 coral fragments achieving a 95% survival rate. Lesions quickly healed, and calcification showed that the fragments were attaching themselves to their substrates.
The rehabilitation method was found to be simple, inexpensive and could easily be conducted by community volunteers and/ or resource managers wishing to enhance or repair a reef.

Big Apple Dive ResortThe Big Apple Dive Resort combined with our efforts to start reef rehabilitation deployment in an already busy dive attraction Puerto Galera, Mindoro Island, Philippines.

Biri Reef Buds

Biri-buds produce a unique form of artificial reef with the following characteristics:
Porosity
Biri-Buds absorb sea water much like a sponge. Together with the water, they also absorb microscopic marine life such as spores, plankton and algae. Strong currents simply drive marine life into the Biri-Buds millions of cavities, and the entire Biri-Bud takes on the pH of the surrounding ocean.

Calcification
The blend of materials in the Biri-Bud reacts with seawater triggering a process very like the natural processes that take place continuously in the sea such as calcification in coral structures, crab shells, crustaceans, and turtle shells etc. This makes the Biri-Buds a natural habitat for all forms of marine life.

Stability
Because they are heavy structures and become heavier as they absorb seawater and marine life, they cannot be moved by strong currents during storms. Their aqua dynamic shape allows currents to glide around them. Their stability encourages permanent homes and spawning grounds for marine life.

The performance of the reef-buds has been an outstanding success.