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In this site the acronym REAF (bold) stands for 'Recreated Enhanced Area for Fish©'. No matter where in the World you might live, REAF (organisation) offers you an opportunity to actively participate in marine enhancement and get connected with our marine environment like never before.
By sponsoring any of our range of modules that go to build up a REAF you will be helping the marine world.
A REAF is defined as a minimum stand alone complex of diverse enhancing materials that is ecologically significant. Whilst more often than not fish of edible size are present, REAFs also provide the structure required for a range of smaller marine life that use it for attachment purposes, promoting the growth of complex food webs. Sponsoring REAF bio-enhancing materials helps the environment and its marine life by encouraging greater bio-diversity and helping build bio-mass.
Fish are both attracted to and use REAF's for a variety of reasons, including sleeping, feeding, breeding, navigation, protection, territory marking, and even getting cleaned by smaller fish.
Sponsoring REAF modules also promotes harvesting fresh seafood for your family and giving fresh fish to one's neighbours, which are considered by REAF as healthy values worth preserving and encouraging. Sponsoring any of the REAF range of modules also opens a portal for you to develop a personalised connection with our global marine environment.
Currently the bio-enhancement efforts being undertaken in the waters off Opotiki are in a square nautical mile of seabed that is basically featureless, of firm mud-silt composition and limited in variety of sea life. The local community will benefit from having an accessible source of healthy seafood close at hand.
REAF is a private environmental initiative working in conjunction with local community, sponsors and you. In New Zealand there are no licence fees for Recreational or Customary fishers and although anyone can legally fish the reefy areas formed, REAF also promotes values of respect of others reefs through its sustainable education programs. Currently enhancement work is progressed solely by local efforts, sponsorship, and REAF eco tourism.
There are a variety of different ways that you can take part in this marine habitat enhancement program.
As our name suggests, REAF is very much in the business of facilitating the building of REAFs. Building a REAF can be completed in several ways.
- Internet sponsored modules described below go to form 'open source' REAFs. The coordinates of these REAFs are listed on our web site for all to use and bear a group identity name such as 'New Yorkers REAF'. No order is too small.
- Individuals or groups can register a plan to self build and deploy seabed enhancement materials of their own design. Naming rights and choice of location confidentiality apply. A $200 registration fee, some conditions and deployment permitting costs apply.
- Sweat equity option. Every year environmentally concerned businesses, Government bodies and Trusts make available funding for small groups to participate in building REAFs. The Group provides most of the labour needed. REAF provides facilities, training, supervision. Sponsors provide the capital needed. These become open source REAFs and bear the name of the group and sponsor. An example might be Rangatahi2008-E.E.F-REAF.
Contact REAF if you are interested in sponsoring or building a REAF under this option.
- Individuals, families, businesses or groups can purchase a REAF system complete from REAF Ltd. An order lists all specifications before construction begins. Naming rights and choice of location privacy apply. You can keep growing your initial reef at any time. See 'REAFs' below for more details.
REAF Building.
Naturally REAF Ltd would like fisher folk to stop and think before upgrading to a bigger boat and traveling further afield to find scarcer fish. The win-win-win concept of being able to do something ecologically positive for the marine environment, use less petrol, and grow fish at a convenient spot where you can visit often has now become a reality.
You can choose whether to keep your REAF location private or otherwise. In addition we offer your promotional logo and web link on our Fishing REAFs web page for all to see. Whether it is dedicated as a business REAF, Family (Whanau) REAF, perhaps a City REAF (example Kiwis in New York) or Charter boat REAF, your name of choice can be associated with your reef forever, offering a real connection for you with the marine world.
Put together a balanced combination of any of the modules described below to the value of $9000 and more and REAF can assure you of life-time naming rights. (Conditions apply re the duration of the Resource Consent, REAF Ltd and maintaining contact details.) The GPS deployment centre point can be yours forever. (You can Google it with photos for friends) Whether you wish to make its location public knowledge or not is entirely over to the family.
Your REAF order includes all permitting fees. Any possible liability factor rests with REAF Ltd and not you.
Please note that although REAF takes every care in its site selections and module construction, it cannot guarantee that all materials deployed will remain in effective
condition for ever.
Ultimately an entire enhanced Community Reef area that will be formed that will collectively benefit many.
Your REAF location will always remain and additions can be made at any time as new module designs are developed.
All modules are hand produced to last many decades in the marine environment.
Currently REAF prefers to take your order first, confirm the details with you and then send an internet invoice in your preferred currency.
Construction on orders over $3200 can
start with a 25% deposit being made. Credit card payment can be made through paymate (preferred), PayPal or by other arrangements. Go to our Internet Orders page.
If you would like to start your journey of seabed enhancement with something of a lesser value, then REAF offers many options for you. All of the modules described below can be ordered and added to an open REAF currently under construction.
Lets look at some of the modules that REAF uses for seabed enhancement, what they do and what their tax inclusive, permitted, deployed prices are.
While
REAF builds modules to very high marine grade specifications designed to last many decades, this is only a part of the REAF enhancement story.
REAF building is one part in a four part process that promotes principles of sustainable resource management.
Mauri is a Maori word and depicts an energy or life force which binds and animates all things in the physical world.
In earlier times Maori placed mauri stones in fish nets to attract more fish.
Similarly we like to project that REAF's are more than than a collection of concrete modules. Although a simple stone can provide substrate for plants to attach to or animals to hide under, it is also the mauri or life force that REAF accounts of great value in its enhancement efforts.
REAF use stones incorporated onto its modules to create small eddying currents that marine life appreciate. They also act as crevice creating spacers between modules.
For a koha (donation) of any amount REAF will dedicate a selected stone by writing your name or letters of choice on it and setting it into one of our enhancement modules to be deployed on the seabed.
REAF promotes a theme of exploring the interconnectedness between man and his environment and as such we view even a small contribution as having the potential to create great changes. You can be assured your koha will help to continue our work.
Go to Internet Orders page to make your koha (donation) and dedicate your mauri stone.
Kia ora. (Thank you)
BioSocks are a completely organic product, even the ties are of New Zealand flax which is renown for its strong fibres. About 30 litre of mostly shell are contained within organic stocking material. The BioSocks are used to lay a foundation on the seabed on which clusters of modules are then stacked. They are also frequently used between deployed modules to slow and cushion their descent during deployment down the rope.
After deployment the outer stocking dissolves harmlessly away and a variety of marine organisms are soon using the clustered materials, thus creating a foundation from which an enriching biogenic reef can form and extend outward over the seabed.
A $50 deposit made into our paymate or PayPal accounts will cover the costs involved in assembling and deploying a BioSock. You can place your order on our Internet Orders page.
SeaDrops present a variety of textured materials that smaller marine life utilise for attachment, protection and reproduction. They are stand alone individualised modules, each one unique, that are deployed randomly within a target cluster area. Our goal is to replicate nature where no two snow flakes are the even same.
SeaDrops add relief and identity to an otherwise featureless seabed and are quickly utilised by marine life.
Our base deployed SeaDrop price is $100 per module.
All orders can be placed on our Internet Orders page.
Fish occupy all the water column, not just the bottom or surface. Many species are quite territorial in behaviour and suspended silt in currents can obscure bottom relief. NavRisers provide extra navigational aids for both fish and fishermen in locating territory.
An additional benefit is that fish that spend some time daily around such an underwater marker will add their excrement to the area, fertilising the seabed below and boosting the enhancement process. A few added to every REAF is recommended.
NavRisers are stand alone modules that are robustly constructed to last. They are topped with a spliced on sonar reflective EcoBuoy and priced at $160 each.
BioLinks are designed to be interlinking and stackable so that taller, complex, stable habitat on the sea floor can be created. BioLinks are constructed with various textured exteriors and crevices to encourage settlement by smaller marine organisms. Stacked together BioLinks create many holes and spaces offering a protective nursery area for the juvenile of many species, including fish.
Our deployed price per BioLink module is $180 each.
Each BioLink is personalised by setting up to seven letters of your choice into the concrete using small stones or by being impressed into the concrete. Your name will be intimately associated with the marine world.
REAF will email you the deployed coordinates of your named BioLink(s). These can be entered on Google Earth for you to share with others.
A very popular seafood to grace the table, be sure and add some CrayHavens to your REAF when at our Internet orders page. Our all inclusive deployed price is $200 each.
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TimePyramids make a novel and attractive gift item that can ignite interest in the marine world.
Email REAF an A4 Word doc or pdf page of what you or your family would like placed in a time capsule and we will print it out, place it in a small container and set it in a concrete pyramid. We also adorn your Time Pyramid with a uniquely attractive New Zealand Paua (Abalone) shell, and set in three identifying initials of your specification using coloured glass nuggets.
Finally REAF will email you a certificate in pdf format that includes an identification photo and GPS coordinates of the REAF that your Time Pyramid will be part of.
If you are purchasing this as a gift then please give the persons name on the Internet Orders page. Allow five days and the certificate will be emailed back for you to print off, laminate or frame as a gift for that special someone.
The Time Pyramid gift option is just $140.
Additionally your GPS coordinates can be entered on Google Earth, which will show you exactly where in the world your Time Pyramid is lying on the seabed.
It's something of interest, helps our environment and when you visit Opotiki you will also know exactly where to go fishing!
Order on our Internet orders page.
At deployment REAF likes to make a personalised dedication that you are invited to submit. REAF values this process so highly that it has coined its own phrase for the process. We call it "connected enhancement.©"
To personalise this process even further send REAF a photo (jpg. image please) and we will have it processed onto a 6 inch square ceramic tile and then set into a concrete disc that will be deployed along with your REAF order.
Dedication Discs are just $80 each.
The Tautoko Option (Maori meaning to help, support or assist) allows for your order to be deployed at a REAF site of your choosing. This is a good option to help grow a REAF site being built by someone you know or support an open source REAF whose theme you might particularly relate to, or for adding to a REAF you might have already sponsored.
REAF charges $100 on top of your order to allow for the extra administration, handling and sea time involved.
You can include this when at our Internet Orders page.
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