Artificial Reefs in Tampa Bay

The state's FWC Boating and Angling Guide to Tampa Bay lists eight artificial reefs inside Tampa Bay whose names point to Tampa and Hillsborough County shorelines, from the Courtney Campbell Causeway in the north to Egmont Key at the mouth of the bay.

The guide is produced by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) with the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, and it numbers each reef with the same number used on the printed boating chart. For every reef it gives the material, the depth and the latitude and longitude. The eight entries in the upper and middle bay, by guide number, are Picnic Island Reef (7), Picnic Island Pier Reef (8), Port Tampa Reef (9), Howard Frankland Reef (10), Courtney Campbell Reef (11), Ballast Point Pier Reef (12), Bahia Beach Reef (13) and Egmont Key Reef (15).

Courtney Campbell Reef has the most northerly coordinates on the list, at 27 degrees 57.8 minutes north, and Ballast Point Pier Reef sits farthest east, off South Tampa at 82 degrees 28.7 minutes west. The guide prints identical coordinates for Bahia Beach Reef and Egmont Key Reef, 27 degrees 44.9 minutes north and 82 degrees 30.9 minutes west, so anglers looking for either reef should confirm the position with FWC before setting out. The guide also states that many more artificial reefs lie in the offshore waters of Pinellas and Manatee counties and are not shown on its chart.

According to the FWC Tampa Bay guide, the reefs near Tampa are built almost entirely of recycled concrete, with steel barges at Port Tampa Reef as the one exception.

Culverts, pilings, slabs and bridge rubble make up most of the list. Howard Frankland Reef and Courtney Campbell Reef carry the names of the two causeways that cross Old Tampa Bay, and both sit in 16 feet of water. Picnic Island Reef, at 26 feet, is the deepest of the eight, and Ballast Point Pier Reef, at 8 feet, is the shallowest. Picnic Island Pier Reef is the only one of the eight that the guide describes as built from purpose-made reef pyramids and reefballs.

Table source: FWC Boating and Angling Guide to Tampa Bay, artificial reefs list.

Those Tampa Bay materials fit state rules. The FWC Artificial Reef Program lists allowable materials as concrete, limestone boulders and heavy-gage steel at least one-quarter inch thick, with the criteria set by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Florida Department of Environmental Protection permits. Deployed material must be heavy, stable, durable and non-polluting. The Tampa Bay guide adds that reefs in general may include reefballs of varying sizes, bridge rubble, old boats and retired military hardware cleaned in accordance with Florida law.

Only state or local coastal governments, such as a county or a city, may build an artificial reef in Tampa Bay, and only inside an area permitted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The FWC explains that the Army Corps does not issue reef permits to private citizens, fishing clubs or nongovernmental organizations because of long-term liability coverage requirements. Placing reef material outside a permitted area violates the Corps permit and may count as illegal ocean dumping, which carries significant federal penalties. For Tampa boaters that settles the question, since the one program in Florida that lets private individuals deploy their own reefs, inside an existing county permit, is limited to Escambia, Bay and Okaloosa counties, so no private reef is permittable in Hillsborough County waters.

State law sets up the support system behind the Tampa Bay reefs. Section 379.249 of the Florida Statutes creates an artificial reef program within FWC that may provide grants and financial and technical assistance to coastal local governments, state universities and 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporations to site, develop, monitor and evaluate reefs. The same section directs the program to track all artificial reef development statewide in a computer database, and its history line traces the law to chapter 81-267, Laws of Florida. FWC reports that since the 1940s more than 4,548 planned public artificial reefs have been placed in state and federal waters off Florida, among the most active of the 15 Gulf and Atlantic coastal states involved in reef development.

The FWC Tampa Bay guide says marine life begins colonizing a reef as soon as it is deployed, and that the reef later draws larger predatory fish such as grouper and amberjack.

The guide describes the sequence on Tampa Bay's reefs. As the reef ages it becomes encrusted with algae, barnacles and corals, small fish then settle on it, and those small fish attract the larger predators. The guide frames the purpose of artificial reefs plainly: man-made habitats that increase reef fish habitat and enhance fishing and diving opportunities.

FWC also funds study of what reefs such as those off Tampa do. The FWC Artificial Reef Program states that an important part of its work is to monitor the economic and environmental effects of reefs, and that monitoring grants have covered socioeconomic studies, reef spacing and design, reef succession, juvenile fish recruitment and comparisons of artificial reef fish communities with those on nearby natural reefs.

Two of the reefs share their names with City of Tampa parks in South Tampa, and both parks have public boat ramps open 24 hours.

Picnic Island Park, at 7409 Picnic Island Blvd., has an extra-wide concrete boat ramp with one double lane, open 24 hours, with an adjacent fishing pier, 13 spaces for vehicles with trailers and 30 vehicle-only spaces. The park itself is open sunrise to sunset. Picnic Island Reef and Picnic Island Pier Reef carry the park's name in the FWC guide.

Ballast Point Park, at 5300 Interbay Blvd. on the east coast of South Tampa facing Hillsborough Bay, has a single-lane concrete boat ramp with a boarding dock and only four spots for vehicles with trailers; the ramp is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while the rest of the park keeps 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. hours. The City of Tampa reports that the park's 600-foot pier has been closed since spring 2025 because of major damage from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, so the pier that gives Ballast Point Pier Reef its name is out of use while repairs continue.

Grants for reefs such as those in Tampa Bay come from fishing-related money, under a user-pay, user-benefit model run through the federal Sport Fish Restoration program and the state Marine Trust Conservation Fund.

For the Tampa Bay reefs the money trail starts with anglers. The FWC explains that federal excise taxes on fishing equipment and motor fuel go to Sport Fish Restoration, and a portion of each state fishing license goes to the Marine Trust Conservation Fund. To date, FWC says, Florida has distributed more than $26,575,000 for artificial reef related activities. The Tampa Bay guide that maps the reefs was itself paid for with Tampa Bay Estuary Program specialty license plate funds and the Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration Fund.

The economics have been measured for Hillsborough County. A University of Florida IFAS fact sheet, Economic Impacts of Artificial Reefs: Hillsborough County, FL (EDIS SG106, published February 29, 2012), comes from a Florida Sea Grant and UF study that asked private boaters and for-hire operators and their clients about artificial reef use during 2009 across a six-county region of southwest Florida, with results summarized in one-page fact sheets. Older records show local hands at work too: Hillsborough County ELAPP photographs held by USF Digital Commons, image 375 and image 373, show Cockroach Bay Youth Environmental Stewardship Camp members carrying large pipes off a truck for an artificial reef, with a creation date of January 16, 1997.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the FWC Tampa Bay boating guide reef list, the FWC Artificial Reef Program page, section 379.249 of the Florida Statutes, the City of Tampa pages for Picnic Island and Ballast Point parks, the UF EDIS fact sheet record and two Hillsborough County ELAPP photo records.