NJ Environmental Dept using prison labor on fisheries project
 
 
Prison work rehabilitates from the ocean floor on up
 
 
By Emilie Lounsberry
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
 
MAURICE RIVER TOWNSHIP, N.J. -- Look out, developers. New Jersey officials
are getting ready to launch an innovative style of seashore housing -- for
fish.
 
This week, state officials will plunk the fish "condos" into the ocean off
Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island.
 
The gray concrete structures are the latest element of New Jersey's
artificial-reef program, which is intended to create new habitat for fish
and protect them from aquatic predators while providing new hot spots for
fishermen and divers.
 
Though the "reef balls" -- their official name -- are used around the
world to build artificial reefs, they are being manufactured in New Jersey
by an unusual workforce: prisoners at the Southern State
Correctional Facility in Cumberland County.
 
The inmates, who earn $1.60 to $3.70 a day, use fiberglass molds to cast
the poured concrete into 3-foot-by-4-foot structures that weigh 1,400 to
1,600 pounds each and look like igloos with holes. It is a back-breaking
job, but prisoners said last week that it was satisfying work.
 
"It's like rehabilitation," said inmate Patrick Hellriegel, 52, who is
doing time for aggravated manslaughter, as he prepared the molds for a new
batch of concrete. "This is the first time I felt good in years, doing this
kind of work. I know it's good for the environment."
 
Anthony Buddington, 35, of Jersey City, who is serving seven years for
robbery, said he liked the idea of helping the fish.
 
"They need a home, too," he said.
 
When the first group of reef balls is put into the ocean about four miles
from shore on Tuesday, they will join an ever-growing number of sunken
ships, military tanks and other structures that are slowly transforming the
landscape of the ever-shifting sandy ocean floor off New Jersey. Reef balls
provide a place for fish to hide, lay eggs or just swim -- as coral reefs
do naturally in other places.
 
"The idea is that they mimic natural reefs," said Richard Christian,
sport-fish restoration coordinator for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries
Commission.
 
Christian, whose agency is composed of marine-fishery representatives of
states from Maine to Florida, said that New Jersey's program, administered
by the Department of Environmental Protection Division of Fish, Game and
Wildlife, was one of the most innovative because of the variety of items
used to create reefs.
 
Since the program began in 1984, more than 1,200 reefs have been built on a
network of 14 sites between Sandy Hook and Cape May. Even a chunk of the
old Ben Franklin Bridge is now part of a reef off Cape May. There are
tires, boats and barges, military vehicles -- and soon, the reef balls.
This year's plans call for installing 600 reef balls as well as tanks and
vessels that have been cleaned up and inspected so they will not hurt the
environment.
 
Bill Figley, who is in charge of the reef program for the state DEP, said
the reef-ball project was funded by the federal excise tax on fishing
equipment. He said making, transporting and installing each reef ball cost
about $125.
 
The state also has an adopt-a-wreck program, through which clubs,
organizations and individual participants can donate money to pay for the
sinking of a wreck or other reef structure. Last year's adoptions included
the sinking of about 20 Army tanks, including one sponsored by the
Philadelphia chapter of the Explorer's Club.
 
Andrew Applegate, who owns a fishing-party boat -- the Captain Applegate
-- that goes out from Atlantic City and fishes above artificial reefs, said
he believed the new reef balls, if properly placed, would attract fish and
thus keep more fishermen and fisherwomen happy.
 
"I think they're going to work well," said Applegate, former president of
the Artificial Reef Association, which has supported New Jersey's project.
 
Figley said the idea was pretty much that the artificial structures would
attract fish -- crabs and lobsters, too -- and that they would make their
way into the hollow interiors.
 
"The environment moves and makes it impossible for a lot of animals to gain
a foothold and stay put and survive," Figley said.
 
The structures also will provide a surface that encourages the growth of
algae, mussels, barnacles and other life forms that, in turn, become food
for the fish.
 
Figley said the reef balls should attract an array of fish -- sea bass,
blackfish, triggerfish and others. He said the balls would be dropped into
the ocean in varying configurations; in some areas there may be as many as
20 or 30 of them plunked down in a type of housing subdivision.
 
He said that once the reef balls become covered with underwater growth, the
holes disappear and the structures resemble coral. "They look fairly
natural," Figley said.
 
The balls were designed by a group of divers who were looking for a way to
create a simple, affordable, environmentally sound way to replicate natural
reefs, said Todd R. Barber, president and CEO of Reef Ball Development
Group Ltd. in Sarasota, Fla.
 
Barber said the first design, which resembled a beach ball, was gradually
refined into a structure that entices a multitude of species, does not move
in storms and uses concrete additives suitable for the growth of marine
life.
 
He said the devices helped fish by allowing them to hide inside and avoid
predators and by giving them a place to rest. Small fry tend to survive
longer in reef balls, he said, and fish also can conceal themselves outside
the ball and wait for food -- smaller bait fish -- to swim by.
 
"They just need a place to hide and hang out," Barber said.
 
He said that there were now about 40,000 reef balls used in 400 projects
around the world in the waters from Australia to the Caribbean to the
Middle East, and that a new project will begin next week in Indonesia. New
Jersey's project is unusual, he said, because of the use of prisoners for
labor.
 
At Southern State Correctional Facility, Hellriegel and a handful
of other prisoners were hard at work last week on the project -- a joint
effort between the state DEP and the state Department of
Corrections.
 
"It's like I'm giving back something," said Hellriegel, a Passaic County
man who is serving a 20-year sentence with a 10-year mandatory minimum.
 
For Willie Vaughan, 35, of Plainfield, serving three years for drugs, the
project enables him to do "something constructive" that is also good for
the environment.
 
"It kills time, gets me in shape, gets my mind to focus on other
things," Vaughan said.
 
Andrew Morgan, 41, who is serving a seven-year sentence for eluding
police in a high-speed chase, said he enjoyed the work and the whole
notion that he was helping the fish.
 
Morgan, who is from the Manasquan area, said he grew up on the water, loved
to fish and had three sons who also enjoyed fishing. When he is released,
he said, he intends to head out to a rock jetty and tell people about the
"fish bowls" he has helped build.
 
"It fits right in with the environment," Morgan said. "The potential is
great with these things."
 
For More Information
For details on adopting a reef, contact the reef program at the New Jersey
Department of Environmental Protection Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife
at 609-748-2020.

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