Micanopy, Florida-based Ocean Habitats, Inc., which has been making and installing their “Mini Reefs” in and around Marco Island since 2014, installed their 10,000th reef in Mobile, Alabama, on May 17, according to company founder and CEO Dr. David Wolff. 

“We’re working with a group there to put one thousand Mini Reefs in Mobile Bay,” Wolff said. “The oyster population has been dying off for the last 30 years, and they’re looking for ways to try to fight that.”

Anyone who’s spent time in Marco’s canals and waterways will recognize the square structures submerged securely under residential and commercial docks across the island. Each Mini Reef is approximately 3x2x2 feet and looks like a black and white layered cake when out of the water, floating mostly submerged when installed beneath a dock. The reef is designed to attract fish, crabs, shrimp, oysters, and other marine life, and when fully developed with these living creatures, each reef is capable of filtering more than 30,000 gallons of water a day, helping substantially improve marine life and water quality.

Marco Island, which was the location of Ocean Habitats’ very first reef installation a decade ago, has more than 1,500 Mini Reefs across the island, making Marco, until the big Alabama project, the company’s largest market.

Wolff says that communities like Marco, Cape Coral, and Mobile have a very specific, action-oriented mindset toward the environment and conservation. “People say, ‘I remember what this water used to look like in the 90s, and it doesn’t look like that anymore,’” Wolff said. “People are tired of talking to politicians and voting for people who say they’re going to do something and they do nothing. They’re saying they can now do something themselves to help the environment.”

Ocean Habitats started as a nonprofit, but as demand for its products grew and its market expanded geographically, it transitioned to a for-profit entity, and with that transition came expanded products and services. The company now offers wrapping and snap jackets for dock pilings, deck replacement, pressure washing and maintenance plans, in addition to its reef installations.

“When you’re working with customers to install Mini Reefs, you hear about all the other issues” related to their docks, Wolff said. “They have things they want to do to create the environment they envisioned when they bought the place for their grandkids to come and fish. It’s really just been an evolution based on customer feedback. I’m just trying to help people out.”

Ocean Habitats has shipped to or installed its Mini Reefs from Maine to Florida, California, Washington, the Bahamas, and Puerto Rico, Wolff says, and the company is currently soliciting distributors for its products. 

Wolff, a native of Southwest Florida, studied marine biology and geology at the University of South Florida and had a successful career in real estate before becoming an ordained minister and creating Ocean Habitats in 2014 with a mission to “bring coastal waters to life.”

In terms of future expansion, Wolff says the company will continue its focus on residential and commercial installations but is working with various state agencies to plan large-scale installations, hopefully in the next two years. 

“We’re talking about an acre of these reefs with something like six or seven thousand units rafted together and whose job is to pump out hundreds of millions of fish, shrimp, and crabs every year,” he says. “In a place like Mobile Bay, we could put billions of larval oysters into the bay to help repopulate there.”