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California
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The Bizarre Split Hulled Barge that Built Narrowneck Reef
Photo: Australian Surfing Reef Design

CN: Right, and the influence of the reef is dependent on the size of the thing. Like everything -- you start manipulating the ocean you don't know what the end result will be. The Army Corps of Engineers has been building stuff in the ocean for 200 years and every time they build something they still run into problems. The ocean system is so complex and dynamic.

The myth that artificial surf reefs are the panacea is nothing but a myth. It's just a structure out there. It might work in some places, it might not work in others. But it's not some sort of a silver bullet.

My concern is that they're going to tap into that fantasy that every surfer has got to make that perfect wave. Lured by the hope of a perfect wave, we're going to let our guard down and let things happen that probably shouldn't. At this point, with only three artificial surf reefs made and only one working, sometimes means that we've got a long way to go to understand how these things work.

Oilpiers, RIP
Photo: Sharp/Surfline

CD: Pratte's Reef was first discussed in the 80's and it wasn't until the new millennium that it was finally built. Seems interesting that it takes so long for this sort of thing to go through the pipe. What led to this quicker decision on Oil Piers? Was it the fact that Oil Piers lost its wave after the pier was removed?

 

CN: I think that was a factor. The Corps was looking for some places to experiment with these things. And it's also a place where there's not much harm to be done. In some respects it'll be a great place and a great experiment.

CD: What about other municipalities in America where this might happen?

The Fascinating, 'Y' Shaped, Floatable Reef
Proposed by Stanleys Reef Foundation

CN: There's been a lot of talk on the East Coast in New Jersey and other places. But one of the big hurdles of this is that they're experimental and unproven. It's going to be hard to get somebody to throw a lot of money at a project when it might cost more than standard techniques. That's always the hurdle of any new technology. A lot of people are very enthusiastic about this -- and of course getting a new surf spot is a very alluring idea.

CD: I'd also think you'd get interest from fishermen and property owners whose homes are built close to the water. But again -- if it doesn't work.

CN: You get burned. I mean, we've definitely taken a lot of flak for Pratte's reef not being a success.

CD: Do you think the expectations for Pratte's were too high?

CN: I don’t know if success was promised as much as it was expected. Everyone hears 'artificial surf reef' and the first thing they envision is Uluwatu or something. There were a lot of misconceptions about what Pratte's could do. When it finally came time for it to be built, the money didn't go too far.

CD: I heard people actually cut the geotextile sand bags at Pratte's Reef.

CN: I don't think that was ever the case. Some were damaged during construction. That was sort of inevitable.

In Australia, the bags were twice the size of a VW bus and they used what's called a split hulled barge to dump them. The bag falls out through the middle.

In El Segundo at Pratte's we didn't have access to a harbor that close. We went out with a barge and a crane and lifted the bags. Some got damaged.

CD: Will they use Geotextile bags in Ventura?

CN: I imagine that will be a requirement to get the approval to build. These bags -- the technology is improving all the time, but they're not going to last forever obviously .

CD: Where are the places internationally showing interest in this?

CN: The thing that surprised me was that there were these little towns in New Zealand that have 1500 or 2500 people. These towns already have surfing, or have the potential. And they're clamoring for artificial surf reefs because they think it's going to be this incredible tourist draw. These communities, including the local surfers, want a reef to attract surfing to their community because they think it's going to generate income. The conference was held in Raglan, which is famous for these big, huge lefts. By New Zealand standards, Raglan is a pretty hopping surf town-- a town that surfing built. And I think a lot of other towns are saying 'we can get a lot of economic development out of getting a surf reef and getting more surfers into town'. Which is so funny to me here because we're overrun with surfers here. The last thing any Southern California surfer wants is to attract more surfers into their community.

CD: Say you put a reef between Churches and San Onofre Point -- where you see those big shorepound closeouts on a big swell. A lot of times I'll think, Gee it'd be nice to have an artificial reef out there when we get a swell. I'll bet you could create a killer wave. But it would probably be just as crowded as Lowers and everywhere else.

CN: The big issue of Surfer mag just said, 'hey reefs will spread the crowds'. Well, I did some quick back of the envelope calculations on that. We've got 800,000 surfers in California. If you do the math, then you have, maybe 8,000 surf spots in California. That still averages out to 100 guys per spot. If you add 1000 artificial surf reefs, you're going to reduce the crowd by what, ten guys? That's 1000 reefs.

Cross-Section of Stanley's PVC Pipe Reef

There's this thing in traffic called the iceberg effect -- if you look at an iceberg above water you're only seeing about 20 percent of the thing. In traffic the theory is that you're going to reduce traffic by building more roads. But what you actually do is just draw more people out onto the roads. People may think 'oh there's all this room'. I think that principle could apply to surfing reefs. I think the notion that you can eliminate crowds in California by adding a surf reef is kind of absurd.

CD: Ten years from now if we were having this conversation. What do you think we will have learned?

At Cables, the Reef Partially Sank.

CN: I think just like all the other coastal structures out there, you'll have a mixed bag of successes and a bunch of failures. But one of my biggest fears is that people are going to let some development or armoring project go through on the basis that they're going to get an artificial surf reef somewhere else. Wetlands mitigation is the best analogy. We'll fill up these natural wetlands over here for this development, but to mitigate, we'll create new wetlands over here. The ones they build are never as good as the natural ones, and my biggest fear is that they're going to roll over on some project where they get promised a reef that may or may not pan out.

The other question is that these things are built, partially because they're experimental, but mostly out of sand bags. And everything that's built in the ocean gets pretty beat up. So the question becomes how long are these things going to last?

Hopefully the science will continue to improve and we'll better understand how the waves break. These guys at ASR, I think they're going to do some pretty decent fieldwork to try and get a handle on what's going out there at Oil Piers. But it's just so complex and it's hard to predict everything.

 

Chad Nelson Talks About Construction of Pratte's Reef
http://www.usc.edu/dept/tsunamis/video/reef/

ASR -- The Company that Built Narrowneck Reef
http://www.asrltd.co.nz/

More on Narrowneck
http://www.narrowneck.com/

Stanley's Reef was competing against ASR for the Ventura project. They have a fascinating idea for a mobile, Y Shaped reef made of PVC piping that can be floated if it needs to be moved. And you can count on some more coverage of this technology in the near future from us.
http://www.stanleysreef.org

More on Newquay and its proposed reef.
http://www.surfnewquay.co.uk/