AUVs and Artificial Reefs: The Game-Changer for Ocean Health and Sustainability
By Erika Pietrzak, March 20, 2025
The overuse of ocean resources is causing significant environmental damage, threatening marine ecosystems worldwide. Emerging technologies like Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are helping monitor and protect artificial reefs, offering hope for the restoration and preservation of these vital ecosystems.
As the ocean belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one. Thus, everyone has an obligation to maintain the ocean and no one has an exclusive right to everything the ocean has to offer. When people try to monopolize on the ocean’s resources, there will soon be nothing left for anyone. This is an example of the tragedy of the commons in a global economy that values infinite growth. As fishing and pollutant regulations have become less and less stringent over the past few decades, waters outside of Cyprus have suffered greatly. People have overexploited Cyprus’s marine resources to the point of depletion, and reefs suffer the consequences of this overexploitation with impacts that are accelerated by climate change. Unsustainable tourism, coastal development, agricultural pollution, and overfishing creates the perfect storm off of Cyprus for complete destruction in the future without intervention. Tiny changes in climatic conditions, contaminants, and accidental human destruction exemplify minor changes that significantly disrupt coral populations. Active reefs benefit water ecosystems by filtering pollutants, balancing populations, and boosting economic activity in the area. To rebuild the reefs that were destroyed, artificial reefs have been implemented worldwide, including in Cyprus. As artificial reefs are a more recent innovation, monitoring these systems requires frequent checks throughout the water column, which is very time-consuming and costly to perform.
Artificial reefs are installed strategically throughout barren areas of the seabed in the hope of rebuilding ecosystems that humans have destroyed. From submerged shipwrecks to offshore wind farms, artificial reefs are a way to take our man-made impacts on the ocean in a more positive direction by building simulated ecosystems on top of these structures with environmental safe material. These structures then accumulate algae as they mimic regular spaces invertebrates and small fish occupy, developing diverse ecosystems that can be strategically placed where they are most needed. These artificial reefs “attract fish to a known location and are therefore popular attractions for commercial and recreational fishermen, divers, and snorkelers.” Reefs in North Carolina, for example, “are strategically located and designed to maximize access by anglers and divers while also serving valuable biological and ecological roles” or placed strategically to emphasize erosion control. These reefs, however, cannot sustain themselves alone and require constant maintenance. As the purposeful implementation of artificial reefs is largely unprecedented, monitoring these sites is crucial to understand any unknown long term impacts on the ecosystem, as well as giving valuable insight into scientific research on food chains.
Autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs, are currently being developed in Cyprus to become the “future of underwater surveillance” for artificial reefs. These small submersibles “monitor, protect and provide data on offshore artificial reefs.” AUVs travel to artificial reefs equipped with sensors and high-definition cameras to produce a clear picture of how effective these reefs are through 3D mapping. Cyprus plans on installing docking stations on the artificial reefs for the AUVs to charge. AUV’s technology also makes them ideal for identifying suitable areas for offshore wind farms and new artificial reefs, particularly with their ability to communicate with other AUVs and act together to increase the benefit of these surveillance vehicles.
Made of an environmentally-friendly cement mixture, AUVs are able to stay out at sea for months at a time while continuously transmitting data in real-time back to researchers. These AUVs can even alert “scientists to any disturbance in protected waters from illegal fishing and encroaching boats.” These surveillance efforts represent collaborations between tech companies, consulting companies, government agencies, and scientists. Projects that involve diverse stakeholders increase the vested interests of many different industries in the future of AUVs, which in turn increases overall investments in improving the technology. These investments benefit more than just the projects they support–collaboration enables improvements across the board. Investments in these types of technologies then allow for a decreased abatement cost by increasing the efficiency of efforts to prevent damage to artificial reefs and marine resources.
Using an economic approach to environmental issues, AUVs can help reach a new, improved social optimum. Since AUVs are untethered and have longer operational duration, their performance matches that of multiple tethered drones, the technology typically used to monitor reefs. Due to these improvements, AUVs are increasingly creating greater returns on investment than tethered drones, monitoring a wider area for a lower cost.. It also prevents negative externalities that may arise from tethered drones that can be caught in reefs, tangle marine life, or break in the harsh currents.
Outside of their use for artificial reefs, the development of AUVs could be helpful for national defense purposes. Their battery-powered thrusters, which make them nearly undetectable, make them a great choice for surveillance in restricted waters. This presents a positive externality of their use in these waters, protecting from any illegal fishing, illegal surveillance, or threat to security. In the US, this could be significant as it can improve both health and national security, two areas that are crucial to voters. This can also decrease the cost of enforcing laws against poaching resources since fewer patrol ships and workers are needed in these areas that AUVs can successfully monitor on their own.
Change The Chamber is a nonpartisan coalition of young adults, 100+ student groups across the country, environmental justice and frontline community groups, and other allied organizations.