And my reply..
And my reply..
It is buried. The rock does not go anywhere. Look at the ballast piles that
have been out there for 300-400- years, it is all in the same spots as the
day it went down. It however is buried and exposed depending on the storms.
I first put rock out in 1997 on my site behind Davis. Was all enthused until
the first storm came and 100% covered the site in sand, not one rock was
showing, I was devastated. However upon investigation I discovered it was
all there, just under the sand.
This has happened numerous tines since the lease inception. 600,000 that I
have placed looks like a small 'rubble' pile, unless one goes out and digs
up the rock and stacks it in piles, and then gets a chance to harvest after
some growth has occurred, before the next storm.
Unfortunately I have found that live rock aquaculture in the Keys is a long
shot, certainly not a viable venture, as the storms either blast the rock
back to it's white virgin state, or bury it every year.
The Gulf site here off Tampa is just the opposite. No storm or hurricane
damage has ever occurred since the first one million pounds of rock went
down in 1993, as the dynamics here are totally different than the keys. We
do not have the surges and waves associated with a behind the reef
environment as the Gulf is a slow sloping bottom contour which is not
conducive to large wave and surge development.
This person is simply not familiar with the dynamics of the inner reef areas
of the Keys.
Richard Londeree
www.tbsaltwater.com
