Artificial reefs are the artificial structures deployed in suitable waters, thereby improving fish ranches, cultivating resources, and boosting the fish harvest. Additionally, artificial reefs are primarily deployed into the sea bottom to change the sea landscape, and thereby through the action of water currents, tides, and waves, are mixed with the water on the top and bottom to form eddy currents so as to stir the salts at the sea bottom and boost the reproductive power of planktons.
Even more than that, the spacious surface area of artificial reefs provides space for many creatures (e.g. invertebrates such as algae, coelenterates, sponges, mollusca, and annelida) to be attached, grow, and become extremely good feeding grounds, thereby attracting other fish to live, eat, cluster, stay, and reproduce there.
Moreover, artificial reef structures, the overlapping effect of deploying artificial reef structures, and the cracks, holes, and hiding places caused by the creatures attached onto the surface also become good sites for fish and shellfish to live, lay eggs, and grow. Just because of these good conditions of artificial reefs, they can achieve fishery resource cultivation.
Records show that artificial reefs were deployed twice since 1973; the first one was the cement reefs deployed along the coast of Peng Tung after 1949; the second one was the fish reefs deployed along Miaoli in 1970. Although no cost-benefits studies were conducted for these two deployments, fish significantly increased, according to fishermen.
In 1973, the government formulated the enhanced rural economic construction project, with the hopes of effectively improving the livelihood of fishermen and promoting the prosperity of rural fishing economy. Additionally, good fisheries that were formed by some artificial reefs caused by accidents such as plane crashes and shipwrecks got good publicity in the media. Hence, many coastal fishermen hoped to fight for funds to deploy artificial reefs.
In 1973, the Fisheries Agency formulated the “artificial reef deployment for resource cultivation” project, and actively launched artificial reef deployments along the western coast, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Penghu, and so on.

Until 1981, artificial reef deployment has been extended every year. During this period, although artificial reefs were deployed along the western and eastern coast of Taiwan, they were still considered small scale in nature.
To estimate the cost benefits of artificial reef deployment and costs for recycling, the Institute of Zoology of the Academia Sinica was commissioned to conduct studies for reef deployment sites since 1973. Complete scientific studies and findings were then used to estimate the economic effectiveness of deploying artificial reefs. Then in 1976, it released the “documentary on the effects of deploying artificial reef resources”, which empirically proved the cost benefits of deploying artificial reefs for the first time in the history of Taiwan.
Through this video, people came to understand the meaning of artificial reefs and the good governmental policies; moreover, this also started a new milestone for the deployment of artificial reefs for fishery resource conservation.