If someone asked you what a “Fish House” was, you would probably think of a fishbowl or aquarium with pebbles, fake plants, some overgrown algae, and a plastic shipwrecked at the bottom.  Now if you were asked to think of an environmentally friendly “Fish House” for the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean, you would probably have something like this come to mind.

Mike Turley of Wayfarer Technologies partnered with Locke back in 2018 to develop a precast concrete design to manufacture several hundred Fish Houses to be deployed and placed in strategic locations along the Gulf Coast.

Use of the precast concrete was chosen because of the durability of reinforced concrete materials, the scalability and consistency of the manufacturing process, and the rapid installation process due to prefabricated units.

This is not the first time Locke and Wayfarer have teamed up to provide an environmentally friendly solution to the Gulf Coast.  President of Locke, Asher Kazmann, first met Mike Turley back in 2006 when Wayfarer first began marketing the multi-functional OysterBreak system.  “Mike has always been good at listening to the people in the coastal restoration arena and coming up with solutions to satisfy their needs,” says Kazmann.  “Together we turn those ideas into real products and value engineer them to be worthwhile and economical solutions.”  Locke’s engineering team worked directly with Wayfarer developing several iterations of this Fish House design until the most efficient product was developed in terms of materials, structural integrity, manufacturing productivity, and efficiency of shipments.

With apparent changes in climate and an excessive number of hurricanes reaching the Gulf Coast, we need to continue exploring ways to protect our shorelines and ecosystems that depend on them.