Modern SCUBA diving technology has become incredibly easy, reliable and accessible- pushing larger amounts of tourists into getting SCUBA diving training and making premium diving locations their next holiday spot. As more people go diving, more stress is being applied on the natural reefs, with side effects such as sea-side building, sewage and garbage littering the oceans, and direct physical contact between divers and the natural underwater environment.

In order to relive stress from the natural reef, diving resorts today need to create artificial attractions, which will benefit with the environment by weighing down the amount of visitors per each spot, and at the same time offer marine life some good “housing” opportunities. For divers, these locations need to prove as an attraction as well- since without attracting divers, they will not serve the purpose of distributing stress. The most common way of creating such attraction until today has been by sinking ships at strategic locations.

Ocean Bricks has developed a new platform. While initially looking like a not very attractive piece of concrete, the “Reef Land” platform provides a safe environment for divers as well as marine life. It can be easily and accurately placed, allowing to plan and create whole arrays of artificial reefs. Currently, there is one such sample unit placed in the Red Sea shore of Eilat, Israel. Corals are planted on it, allowing experimenting with rapid coral growth and testing the way marine life respond to this foreign object.

I recently visited the location, equipped with my Olympus C-8080 and matching underwater photography case, here are some samples:

Got other samples of environmental projects photographed? Let us know!