Southwest Florida Fishing News October 2000 REEF BALL UPDATE The Reef Ball Development Group, Ltd. has developed
new mold systems specifically for students, prison labor or
other groups that desire the ultimate in ease to create a
modified "Reef Ball".
The design creates Reef Balls with a bell shape rather
than a dome shape to insure that design criteria for stability
are exactly the same as regular Reef Balls. The bell shape
offers more surface area on the bottom to insure less
sinking when deployed on soft sand bottoms.
The molds are simple two piece units that don't require any bases to be built or even the inflation of a
center bladder - in fact, the center bladder that can be used for floating deployment is not even used in
casting! The molds can be set up in just a few minutes and taken apart just as quickly. These molds are
designed for the amateur or beginning Reef Builders; they are not as flexible as regular Reef Balls so
that errors cannot be made in building. They are also capable of being used in mass production to
produce large quantities of designed artificial reefs at an absolute minimum of cost. Units produced by
this system are partially stackable for ease of transportation.
They utilize Reef Ball proprietary concrete which not only is pH adjusted for creation of a balanced
fouling community but which also does not require re-bar so the units will last over 500 years rather
then just a few decades. Patented Reef Ball features are utilized within these new designs including
Swiss cheese hole patterns, roughened surface texture and 80% of the weight being in the bottom 20%
of the units.
These molds will not be available for public sale until they have been utilized by the Reef Ball
Coalition in an educational environment and they will be available to a select few beta-testers so that we
can fine-tune the designs for mass production. We expect the beta phase to last about a year before the
molds will be available for broad use.
Preliminary tests indicate that these units, particularly on sandy bottoms, are even more stable than
regular Reef Balls! These new molds are covered by Reef Ball Patents, Reef Ball Copyrights and patents
pending.
"CLASSROOM ON WHEELS" FOR SENIORS
Reef Ball will be giving presentation classes to the Sarasota based "Classroom on Wheels" program....
