Artificial reefs in Canary Islands : an overview of their present situation

Abstract

Since 1989, the Canarian Autonomous Government promoted the construction of artificial reefs aiming to enhance artisanal fisheries in shallow coastal areas of the Canary lslands. At present time. four artificial reef are deployed on sandy/rocky bottoms between 18 and 26 m depth in Lanzarote. Gran Canaria and La Palma lslands. The design of those reefs presents two different approaches. In Gran Canaria (GC) and La Palma lslands (P). they are build with five different types of concrete modules (from 1.2 to 8.5 m.t.) inside a rectangular surface of 24,000 m2 with 84 modules in GC, whereas in P there are 52 modules in a triangular surface of 15.300 m2. In the other hand, the two reefs of Lanzarote lsland were constructed with 35/34 concrete modules of only one alveolar type (9.1 m.t.) in a rectangular surface of 9,800 m2 respectively.

The diversified habitat provided by the artificial reef complexes of Gran Canaria and La Palma enhanced the settlement and later development of more fishes and benthic species compared to the modules of Lanzarote artificial reef complexes. Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out the constant disturbance of illegal fishing in the reef domain which determined an underestimation of fish production. The future development of a broader artificial reef program in Canary lslands should obtain a compromise among local fishermen activities, oceanographic characteristics of the selected site and modules design in order to achieve more successful results.