FISHING FOR THE VIADUCT

[Phoenix77]

SEATTLE—With the Alaskan Way Viaduct along Seattle’s waterfront slated to down late next decade, a group of local fishermen has its eyes on the girders and guardrails for a whole new structure: underwater reefs for ailing Puget Sound rockfish and lingcod.
Rob Tobeck recently came up with the green idea to recycle clean parts of the elevated highway for marine fish habitat instead of sending it to the landfill.

“I’ve always been frustrated with the lack of good bottomfishing you’d think we would have in Puget Sound,” explains the former center for the Seattle Seahawks and Washington State University, as well as Coastal Conservation Association member. “I’ve seen in Florida where they’ve taken old barges and old bridges and that’s where you go fish.”

Lined up behind him is Bear Holmes, a 62-year-old fourth-generation Washingtonian who chairs CCA Washington’s Puget Sound Marine Enhancement Committee and who admits to personally aiding in the decline of those stocks in his younger days. He wants his grandchildren to one day enjoy that same quality of fishing he did in the day.

Also on the field, Highline Community College’s marine-science and South Seattle CC’s trade-training programs. What started out as a small project by students at the former school to study marine colonization at a lab on Puget Sound has turned into a scientific experiment with potentially worldwide implications, according to Holmes. Right now, the National Marine Fisheries Service is putting together a proposal to sink a dozen 100-foot-long, 15-foot-high reefs of various types, some made at the second college, and figure out whether they help restore bottomfish populations.

On the sidelines are the state departments of Transportation, Fish & Wildlife and Natural Resources. Holmes says DOT wants to know what viaduct materials would be needed. While bridges and roads have been used to create reefs elsewhere, with the focus on cleaning up polluted Puget Sound, “We don’t want to put something out there that will create harm,” such as road surfaces, he says.

OFFICIALLY, FISH & WILDLIFE is “in the evaluation stage,” says Greg Bargmann, a marine manager in Olympia. The agency got out of the reef-building business years ago because they weren’t sure the structures were effective.

However, Holmes says those the state created off of Alki, Blake Island and the KVI radio tower have been “extremely productive.”
Continued@: http://www.nwsportsmanmag.com/current-issue/

[Mike Carey]

that would make a heck of a big reef!

[curado]

yeah it would