09/16/2026
Last year we shared the construction and launch of these underwater habitats that we completed in conjunction with Marine Institute, Memorial University, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Cenovus.
Today we are proud to share what they look like a year later! Click on the link below to view the live camera.
https://www.smartatlantic.ca/observatory.php?id=reef_ball_fox_harbour
Newcrete
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City Concrete
NEWFOUNDLAND DROPPED 285 CONCRETE BALLS INTO THE SEA. NOW THEY ARE COMING ALIVE. 🪸
Five metres beneath the surface of Placentia Bay, an underwater camera wakes up once every hour. Its light cuts through the darkness for two minutes as cunners weave through concrete openings, kelp sways in the current and lobsters, crabs and sea urchins move across structures that did not exist there a little more than a year ago.
During the summer of 2025, the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University led the installation of 285 specially designed concrete reef balls near Fox Harbour. They were placed in an area where years of vessel activity had affected the seafloor.
These are not ordinary blocks of concrete or discarded construction material. Each structure contains openings, protected spaces and surfaces designed to give marine organisms places to attach, feed and hide. Together, they form an artificial reef intended to bring complexity back to a section of ocean floor that had lost some of its natural habitat.
The transformation is already visible. Algae and kelp have begun covering the concrete while fish and shellfish move through the new underwater neighbourhood. What entered the water as bare human-made structures is slowly disappearing beneath layers of Atlantic life.
Researchers are documenting every stage. The camera sits about five metres below the surface and roughly 10 metres from the reef. It records for two minutes every hour, transmitting footage through a cellular network to Memorial University. Divers, sonar equipment and remotely operated vehicles are also being used to map the site and observe which species arrive, which ones stay and how the habitat changes.
This is not a short experiment created for a few impressive photographs. The monitoring system could remain in place for as long as nine years, allowing scientists to watch an entire marine community develop almost from the beginning.
For generations, Newfoundland and Labrador has depended on the ocean while rarely seeing what happens beneath its surface. Damage to the seafloor can remain invisible from shore, but so can recovery. This project is giving the public a window into both.
Nobody is claiming that 285 concrete structures can repair every damaged section of the Atlantic. If the reef continues developing, however, the information collected in Placentia Bay could help shape future marine restoration projects far beyond Newfoundland.
If industries disturb the ocean floor, should rebuilding habitat like this become mandatory, or should the focus remain on preventing that damage from happening at all?
