These artificial reefs off a New York City beach help sea creatures. They might also save lives

NEW YORK– Almost nothing stood in the way of the crashing waves that crashed into oceanfront homes in Staten Island’s Tottenville neighborhood when Superstorm Sandy hit the city 12 years ago. A narrow strip of sand, some brush on the beach and a few lonely trees did almost nothing to slow the ocean swell as houses collapsed and others were torn from their foundations, killing a 13-year-old girl and her father.

But after years of work, a system of artificial reefs largely completed this summer could help soften the blow of future hurricanes.

Funded with $111 million Sandy recovery, the ‘Living Breakwaters’, built approximately 300 meters from Tottenville beach, were designed to protect residents from future storms. While the concrete and rock barriers won’t stop flooding, project designers say they will undermine the power of the ocean waves, reducing daily erosion and damage from future storms.

The artificial islands have the added benefit of reviving a bay ecosystem that has been damaged by years of fishing, pollution and dredging. That’s because they integrate “living” features such as tide pools and textured surfaces into a traditional breakwater to better protect oysters, crabs and fish.

The concept is catching the attention of other coastal cities, including Florida’s Cedar Key, which was hit by Hurricane Helene last month.

Living Breakwaters architect Pippa Brashear said other shoreline communities exposed to waves, damage and erosion could use a similar strategy. Projects in California, Washington state and Florida are already doing this, albeit on a smaller scale.

Staten Island’s new reefs provide some of the same basic protection from storms as the breakwaters common in ports around the world. But many of those barriers and seawalls along coastal cities have a drawback: they often repel marine life. Smooth concrete attracts fewer mussels, barnacles and oysters looking for surfaces to grab, and doesn’t provide places for fish to hide.

Brashear, of Scape Landscape Architecture, said New York’s reefs are designed to create a habitat for marine life.

“It’s not just about reducing risk, but about niches and crevices, complex surfaces where bird organisms can form and where young fish can hide and find refuge – a refuge from predation,” she said.

Birds already use the islands as breeding grounds. Since construction began in 2022, they have become a winter refuge for migrating seals. Algae cling to the textured concrete surfaces, covering the gray rocks and concrete with green algae that dance with the current at high tide. Snails, barnacles, shrimp and crabs nest in tidal pools cast from concrete and placed between large stones by a crane.

Eventually oysters will be added The Billion Oyster Project. Before being harvested to near-extinction in the 19th century, oyster beds in the Raritan Bay, which separates Staten Island and New Jersey, measurably reduced the force of storms. Oysters have also been shown to purify water of pollutants.

Brashear and her colleagues proposed the design as part of a competition for Hurricane Sandy relief funding, in consultation with Tottenville residents.

Some areas along San Diego’s coastline have been retrofitted with habitat-friendly tide pools, similar to those used in New York.

“When the tide is out, you see all kinds of different algae and all kinds of different animals living, especially in those tide pools, but also around the edges of those tide pools,” says Luke Miller, a marine biologist in San Diego. State University.

Since 2017, an extensive $400 million seawall structure with living features has been in place along a narrow section of Seattle’s coastline, successfully improving habitat for baby salmon.

New York’s success in attracting government funding for the Living Breakwaters encouraged others to look at the idea, said Joshua Norman, a disaster resilience leader at Trilon Group’s DMRP engineering division, who is proposing a similar concept in Cedar Key, on Florida’s Gulf Coast. He said it would have reduced erosion around a local bridge and roadway from Helene.

Sandy’s flooding killed 23 people on Staten Island after the storm made landfall October 29, 2012. Many of them died in their homes after water flooded their coastal neighborhoods. Thousands of homes on the island suffered flooding and hundreds were destroyed.

Since then, the island has served as a laboratory for strategies to deal with devastating storms. In some neighborhoods, residents have been buying up and permanently withdrawing from flood-prone areas. Despite this withdrawal, construction of a $600 million, 21-foot (more than 6 meters) high seawall is expected to begin soon near these and other neighborhoods.

Other parts of the city have also developed coastal defenses.

In Manhattan, a stretch of parkland along the East River is being raised to serve as a barrier against future storm surges. Storm surge barriers are planned as part of a line of protection that will eventually form a ‘U’ around the southern tip of Manhattan. On Queens’ Rockaway Peninsula, storm-destroyed boardwalks have been rebuilt as reinforced flood barriers.

Climate experts warn that while breakwaters are a useful tool to deal with intensifying storms, they will only help as long as seas continue to rise.

“They buy some time,” says Larissa Naylor, professor of geomorphology and environmental geography at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

Back in Tottenville, the breakwaters don’t provide the same psychological sense of security as a large sea wall or dike. Brashear said Tottenville residents who participated in the design process did not want a wall that would block access to their beach. But some residents are skeptical that the breakwaters will help much if another storm like Sandy makes landfall.

“If another storm comes, it won’t mean anything,” says local resident Michele Heerlein (61), referring to the barrier system.

But Heerlein, who grew up a few blocks from the beach, says she’s seen more stingrays, sharks and fish since the breakwaters were built.

“Maybe they’ll bring back the mussels and the muscles,” she said, pointing to the breakwaters.