Marine life teems around Barco Hundido, an artificial reef anchored by a sunken ship, and one of the best big-fish dive sites in the world, inside Caño Island Biological Reserve off Costa Rica’s southern Pacific coast.
Long ago, lost in the mists of time, the first artificial reef was created. That first captain who sank the first boat made the first artificial reef. Fish, divers and things that eat fish have been hanging out on artificial reefs ever since.
Under the waves of Costa Rica lie many manmade things. The ones that last and contain a rough surface grow marine life like algae and corals. Fish come to eat and hide from being eaten amid the structure. Voilà: an artificial reef.
My first experience with a Costa Rican artificial reef was at my favorite place to eat back in the ’80s. Restaurante Las Olas in the Caribbean port city of Limón was built on big concrete pillars, over tide pools on flat days and breaking surf on days with swell. You could sit and chow lobster while you watched live lobster living in the reef below. The manmade pillars were full of coral and sponges and surrounded by schools of fish. Although this was before the tourism boom, the place was always packed.
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