Water-Related News

Cleaning up Venice’s Roberts Bay one drop at a time: reef balls installed under docks

Roberts Bay cleanup strategy includes Vertical Oyster Gardens under docks and strategic seeding of clams to help filter water

VENICE – Shaun Graser fondly remembers fishing in Roberts Bay behind his parents' Laguna Drive home.

“When we were young, we would catch flounder all the time,” Graser said one recent morning, as divers from Reef Innovations worked on placing four reef balls underneath the dock of his mother Pat’s house. “Now we rarely see anything at all, though I have been seeing baby fish.

"Growing up here I remember when all of this was oyster bars that we would maneuver around when we were skiing and so the ecosystem has changed and we need to enhance it,” the son of the late former Venice mayor Merle Graser later added. “When we’d go water skiing out here and it was low tide, you’d put your feet underneath here and feel the fish – it was fun.”

The four 600-pound reef balls – designed as a starter or an artificial reef – were among the 19 such structures Reef Innovations owner Larry Beggs and divers Robert Kernan and Daniel DeLaTorre were scheduled to place at homes along Roberts Bay, as part of the Roberts Bay Revitalization Project.