Hockey and Oysters: A Match Made in Florida

How can hockey sticks help clean up the nation’s waterways? Just ask marine biologist and hockey coach Bob Wasno of Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU).

Typically, when a hockey player breaks a stick, it goes in the trash and ends up in a landfill. But Wasno, the resource coordinator of FGCU’s Vester Marine Field Station in Bonita Springs, has developed a unique way to recycle broken sticks: he and his players turn them into oyster reefs.

Since the early 1990s, Wasno has been involved in designing and deploying artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico. One of his designs, which he calls the Lincoln-log structure, is a series of concrete pilings fastened together in a massive box-like shape that resembles the frame of a cabin a kid might make with Lincoln Logs.

Musing over stacks of broken hockey sticks several years ago, Wasno came up with the idea of cutting broken sticks to uniform sizes, fastening them together in the shape of a Lincoln-log reef, and attaching the resulting structures under boat docks.

The Rink2Reef program was born.

Bob Wasno builds an oyster reef out of broken hockey sticks. Note the Lincoln-log like structure (Courtesy: Rink2Reef)

Hockey sticks are not plastic, Wasno emphasizes. Hockey sticks are made of a carbon composite material, which is inert and does not degrade or leach chemicals into the water. The hockey stick reefs went through several years of testing for environmental impact and fitness for oysters before the operation expanded beyond the docks around the Vester Field Station.

Once in the water, the hockey-stick reefs become encrusted with oysters. Oysters are filter feeders, and an oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day; 400 oysters can take up residence on a hockey-stick reef, so a single reef can filter 20,000 gallons in a single day—purifying local waterways.

FGCU students participate in the project as researchers, collecting data to determine filtration volume by oyster size and filtration efficiency rates. This information can be used as a barometer for water quality, which is especially important for an area like Southwest Florida, which has been hit hard in recent years by harmful macro- and micro-algal blooms, including cyanobacteria and red tides.

Given the hockey stick reef’s potential to both monitor water quality and purify waterways, City of Fort Myers officials gave the program $10,000 to install oyster reefs under docks in the local Caloosahatchee River. The city also pledged to subsidize the cost of reefs throughout the community (with $175 in subsidies for residential properties, and $250 for commercial ones).

Rink2Reef has a broader—and important—education component as well. Wasno noted that, since the project began, he’s never had a marine biology major on his hockey teams. But FGCU requires every student to put in 80 community service hours somewhere in Southwest Florida, and many hockey players do their volunteering at Vester, where they put together reefs, help around the labs, and learn about aquatic ecosystems. Young adults who might never have learned about sustainability are now getting hands-on experience in the field.

Students set out to install hockey stick oyster reefs (Courtesy: Rink2Reef)

Student hockey players from around the country have also visited FGCU to get some rink time and learn about the Rink2Reef program, and the program is spreading: a local hockey club in New Jersey is now making reefs, and Wasno is getting calls about hockey-stick reefs from marine labs at other universities.

Rink2Reef has been endorsed by the National Hockey League, was featured in the October 2018 issue of USA Hockey magazine (Wasno appeared in the magazine’s Sept. 27, 2018, podcast), and has received an offer of donations of damaged sticks from CCM, a major hockey stick manufacturer.

Hockey and oysters might seem an unlikely pairing, but Rink2Reef’s mission drives at the heart of sustainability: diverting waste from landfills and turning it into a place for life to thrive and help clean up the environment.

Visit the Rink2Reef website here to learn more.

 

Author: Amber Todoroff