Project Area Name: Halkett Bay

Project Manager Name: John Campbell

Contact: mustang_5L (at) shaw (dot) ca

Area Website: www.gue-bc.com

For the last 6 years the Ex-HMCS Annapolis has been slowly prepared to be the next artificial reef in British Columbia. This project has been riddled with political roadblocks and hurdles that the Artificial Reef Society of British Columbia and other parties has worked its way through. The Federal and provincial governments have approved the sinking of the Annapolis in Halkett Bay marine park on Gambier island. This sink site has been plagued with constant and unrelenting opposition from the residents of the bay stating that an artificial reef will cause damage to the ecosystem instead of rebuilding the already damaged bay.

Halkett bay was identified as being a perfect candidate for an artificial reef because of the extensive damage done to the marine ecosystem by the logging industry. During storms logs would be stored inside the bay while they waited for calmer waters. Because of this, the floor of the bay is a barren wasteland from the floating logs blocking out sunlight as well as bark blanketing the seabed. As part of this project baseline we intend to provide documented evidence demonstrating that artificial reefs are positive or negative additions to the oceans.

The intuition of the baseline is to monitor 3 Stations. The first Station would be located on the main hangar deck going from the stern of the hanger deck into the helicopter hanger. The second and third stations would be on the seabed floor on the port and starboard sides monitoring for marine life changes as well as sediment sampling to identify if PCB's are being introduced into the sediment from the ship.

There are two ways to submit data to the Project Baseline database. You can submit data for existing projects, and you can submit data for projects that are not currently hosted (ad-hoc) in the database.