REEF GRIEF: Destin wants artificial reefs under new management

The future of Destin’s charter fishing fleet could depend on Mobile, Ala., Destin City Councilor Kelly Windes says.

Recently, the council voted unanimously for a resolution asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to transfer supervision of the Emerald Coast’s artificial reefs from its Jacksonville office — which is considering new standards local fishermen say are unworkable — to Mobile.

“The Mobile office is a little more reasonable,” said Windes, a charter captain. “The reefs are the life blood of charter fishing ... The Jacksonville office has the intent, if I read it correctly, of putting us completely out of business. If it goes away, they’d like it to go.”

Candy Hansard of the Emerald Coast Reef Association said in April the Gulf needs reefs because the flat, sandy floor around the Emerald Coast is a “wet desert” that offers nowhere for fish to take shelter. New reefs, she said, improve the habitat, boost the fish population and eventually develop into thriving marine communities.

Windes has said the reefs also let captains save on fuel because boats can steer straight to a reef to fish, and that Jacksonville’s new regulations would “kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

Jacksonville wants reef builders to use steel at least a half-inch thick to prevent reefs breaking up. Windes and the other captains said the chicken “transfer cages” the fleet uses, which are made of steel one-eighth of an inch thick, have held together just fine.

The captains say half-inch steel would be too expensive, and concrete is too heavy to take out into the Gulf, so the new rule would make it impossible to build more reefs. Hansard has said that even the barges local governments sink for reefs have steel only three-eighths of an inch thick.

The Mobile office isn’t supporting the half-inch rule, and Mobile’s authorized reef-building area takes in three times as much of the Gulf bottom as Jacksonville allows.

“We’re hopeful we can increase the size of our reef-building areas,” Windes said Monday.

The Corps of Engineers' Mobile office did not return multiple phone calls.