After a life of traversing the Chesapeake Bay and open sea, the steel hull of Freya, a 30-foot sailboat, arrived under tow on April 10 at its final destination on Virginia’s Windmill Point Reef. After a contractor opened the drain valves to let water rush in, Hunter Smith, an artificial reef specialist with the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, watched the water fill the hull. After the last bubble of air escaped with a burp, Freya sank to the bottom of the Bay in a blink.
The boat was built and owned by Gilbert Klingel, a Mathews County boatbuilder, Bay naturalist and author who died in 1983. It is the latest item to be donated to the marine commission’s Artificial Reef Program. The program creates underwater habitat in the lower Bay and at a handful of sites offshore, using everything from purpose-made concrete “reef balls” to enormous sections of demolished bridges and other discarded steel and concrete infrastructure. And of course, demoded boat hulls.
The reefs provide shelter and places for organisms to hide from predators. Over time, algae and oysters form on the surface. This in turn attracts small fish, then bigger fish, as the site becomes a place of food and safety.
Virginia’s artificial reef program has been operating since the 1970s and has created 18 reef sites in the Bay watershed. People can donate materials, like Freya, to the commission. Smith then tests and preps the material, stripping it of potential pollutants.
“You can ship [materials] inland and have it chipped up and recycled, and that costs money and time,” he said. “Or we could use it for something good, to build habitat.”
The Mathews Maritime Foundation, which had cared for Klingel’s boat since 2017, donated it to the marine commission because maintenance had become too costly. The foundation, based on Virginia’s middle peninsula, preserves the maritime and cultural history of Mathews County, including the legacy of Gilbert Klingel.
Klingel was a self-taught naturalist and wrote articles based on his observations of the Bay. He studied marine life using a diving chamber he built in 1954, called an “aquascope,” in which he and one other person could lie on the Bay floor off Windmill Point and watch fish swim by.
“I think, as a sailboat, [Freya] lives on,” said foundation president Peter Hall. “The memories of Gilbert, the work that he did, lives on.”
Artificial reefs can be suitable habitat for fish populations. A study published in Frontiers of Marine Science found that such reefs in North Carolina’s Pamlico Sound attracted three times more fish than the surrounding unstructured areas.
Study author James Morley, though, said it’s still not clear whether artificial reefs boost fish populations or just attract more fish. Plus, there are concerns that those concentrations of fish in turn attract people fishing for them, diminishing the natural benefits of built habitat.
To enhance fish populations, Morley recommends placing artificial reefs in places that are difficult for anglers to reach.
Smith plans on revisiting Freya in June. Now, the boat can enjoy all the wonders at the Bay floor, just as its owner did.