St Georges Basin artificial reef completed

The last of the 210 reef balls have been installed into St Georges Basin in the latest expansion of the artificial reef, bringing the site to a total of 990 modules and an area of about six hectares.

Interestingly, cameras were lowered into the water to capture images of the new reef immediately after the last had been deployed and we saw bream already checking out the new structure.

The $200,000 expansion of the popular St Georges Basin estuarine artificial reef is designed to attract more fish such as flathead, bream, mulloway and snapper.

The NSW government says that the expansion of the St Georges Basin reef is a great example of how funds from the NSW Recreational Fishing Trusts are being invested back into projects and initiatives which directly benefit recreational fishers.

The St Georges Basin reef extension required about 14 trucks to transport the Reef Balls, each weighing about 700 kilograms, to the site.

It took about two weeks to carefully deploy the concrete balls from a barge and now St Georges Basin contains over a thousand Reef Balls all told.

The government says it has deployed about 2800 concrete modules for estuarine artificial reefs across the state to date.

The already successful St Georges Basin reef complements the existing estuarine artificial reefs along the coastline of NSW in the Bellinger River, Lake Macquarie, Botany Bay, Lake Conjola, and Merimbula Lake.

The recreational fishing industry in NSW is an important one, estimated at bringing about $1.6 billion in expenditure each year and create about 14,000 jobs.