One of the main functions of an artificial reef is to attract fish for recreational purposes, like fishing or diving.

But one of the unique aspects of Kimberly's reef is for experimentation and the scientists and students at FGCU, you have a lot of questions in search of answers.

Welcome to Kimberlys Reef.

We have this platform in the water, this laboratory, and so now it's time to roll up our sleeves and do the research.

The entire Kimberleys Reef project is really an experiment in itself.

Because the water school is interdisciplinary.

We're kind of approaching this from all different levels.

So we're looking at the sediment, we're looking at the water, we're looking at the invertebrates, the stuff that's growing on the reef, and then we're looking at the fish.

So kind of taking a whole ecosystem approach.

It's rare that we have the opportunity from just bare concrete to examine the development of an artificial reef from its inception to kind of determine its ultimate function in the ecosystem, what service it provides to track that development over time.

So out of a series go in the water.

They're structure, they're fish like structure.

Stuff grows on it.

Small fish eat that stuff or hide in the stuff that grows on it.

Bigger fish come eat them.

We come for the bigger fish.

We eat the bigger fish.

So, is that true?

Does that actually happen?

How does it happen?

What rate does that happen?

These are all questions that we don't know.

So.

So it's been very interesting to see from the time that the bare cement blocks were first put in until now, how they were first colonized by small algae and then other invertebrates began to colonize them.

And we saw fish beginning to visit them.

And it seems like every time we go out and visit the reef, we see more life colonizing it.

There aren't a lot of folks conducting fish, fish research, fish ecology research there.

So I'm really excited to get started.

So we got a grant to do some preliminary research on Kim's reef, and the overarching goal of the grant is to try to tie in changes in water quality and harmful algal blooms with the reef.

And so thinking about like water discharge from the Caloosahatchee.

The chemistry matters, the biology matters, the ecology matters.

And then there's always the general water quality, right?

So just general parameters, temperature, salinity, pH dissolved oxygen and then the whole other part is physics, right?

So how, where do currents go?

What happens when a hurricane does come?

What happens when just a cold front comes?

What does that do?

We don't know about all of the things that we're measuring.

All have a big interaction together.

These are all questions that we're trying to answer with this and getting this year of data that we've done, it's really going to help us see not only effects from the hurricane, but also these more long term effects from the nutrients and all the other pollutants being discharged from the Caloosahatchee.

on the things that live on the bottom.

One thing in being out on the reef, doing the work we're doing out there right now, it's causing us to expand our thought process and it's causing us to evolve what we think about Kimberly's reef what we think about our coastal ecosystems, and that's science and education in a way.

You you start getting curious.

You say, Huh, what about that?

Oh, look at this.

It's a really interesting thing that Kimberly's reef presents is this opportunity to move knowledge forward and curiosity forward.

Major support for Kimberly's reef is provided by Bodil and George Gellman, who believe the human spirit is behind every scientific discovery.