Following the massive interest in the Hotel Sid artificial reef project we recently worked on, Louisiana Public Broadcasting's Karen LeBlanc wanted to know more about what makes this project so innovative.
Here, Karen goes behind the scenes with Natrx CEO Leonard Nelson and Danos Ventures CEO Eric Danos to get an up-close look at how ExoForms are created and what makes them a higher-performance, more cost-effective solution than the traditional methods for creating artificial reefs of the past.
Building healthy new ecosystems requires a positive partnership ecosystem. A new artificial reef installed on September 14th in Barataria Bay is the result of an inspiring collaboration between partners, including CCA of Louisiana, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Shell, Danos, our ExoForm technology, and, very notably, the generous sponsorship of Raising Cane’s.
We had a great turnout to see the ExoForms that will form the nature-based infrastructure of this nearly 10,000-square-foot artificial reef go into the water (each one in under 2 minutes!), and we can look forward to the Raising Cane's Hotel Sid reef becoming a thriving marine ecosystem and a hotspot for the Grand Isle fishing community. Big thanks and congratulations to all of our partners.
KATC News was out with us on a recent installation of Natrx ExoForms™ to help build back a healthy and vibrant food chain at a popular fishing location.
Our ExoForms are at the center of this habitat restoration project. ExoForms provide a stable and rough surface for base marine organisms to attach to and make home, helping restore the lost food chain from the bottom up. Healthy natural systems are resilient systems that provide a whole list of ecological benefits including cleaner water, increased biodiversity, and increased storm resilience.
And read the KATC story here:
CCA and Partner Agencies Install 50th Artificial Reef
Location: South Louisiana
Natrx delivers technologies that enable a harmonious, healthy, and resilient balance between the built environment and the natural world. Our technology offerings include artificial intelligence-based risk assessments, nature-based advanced manufacturing solutions, and continuous monitoring. We help practitioners in the infrastructure market build more sustainably, efficiently, and harness the power of natural systems. Natrx is a rapidly growing Raleigh-based startup looking for top candidates to add to our core team.
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Job Overview:
Natrx is seeking an experienced and dynamic Senior Process Engineer to lead the ground-up implementation of factory automation within our organization. This pivotal role involves designing, implementing, and optimizing automation processes to enhance efficiency and productivity. The ideal candidate will have a solid foundation of implementing automation from scratch, with strong process optimization and project management skills. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of our manufacturing capabilities and drive significant operational improvements.
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Linkedin: Natrx Senior Manufacturing Engineer - Louisiana
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An exciting project that we recently completed with Danos and the CCA of Louisiana and the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries was recently covered by NOLA.com.
Our ExoForms™ were the ideal solution for this project in that they could be designed for the the site's shallow water (still allowing for boat access) while providing 19 square feet of oyster habitat per ExoForm. By creating new oyster habitat this project will support a healthy and productive marine life system which, in turn, will support the local fishing community. It's a great example of the ongoing positive benefits that can be generated by helping restore a system to a harmonious, natural balance. It's also one of the first projects that was serviced by our Louisiana-based Resilience Center of Excellence.
You can download our case study on the project here.
The story from NOLA.com is below (original story here):
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Artificial reefs take shape on a sunken island near Port Fourchon
PORT FOURCHON — It looks like a collection of pale cypress knees, was made with a 3D printer and promises to be a magnet for oysters and fish.
The strange-looking artificial reef taking shape in Terrebonne Bay is a new tool that conservation and fishing groups hope will help ease habitat loss along Louisiana’s rapidly eroding coast.
“Our fish keep disappearing because we’ve lost so much habitat over the last 20 years,” Leeville fishing guide Chad Billiot said just before watching a crane hoist the knobby clusters of concrete from a barge and then plop them into the bay eight miles west of Port Fourchon. “This is habitat we desperately need.”
The reefs, called “Cajun corals,” are one of many designs for the hundreds of underwater barriers the state and nonprofit groups have installed along the coast to counter the land-robbing effects of erosion, sea level rise and stronger storms. Some artificial reefs are made with cement balls or pyramids, while others feature recycled oyster shells crammed into stackable cages.
What sets Cajun corals apart is how quickly they can be customized and manufactured for a range of uses and environments, said Tyler Ortego, a coastal engineer with Natrx, a North Carolina design firm that developed the reefs with Gray-based marine construction and maintenance company Danos.
Each reef module is made by hundreds of needles injecting concrete into a form. Danos makes the Cajun corals at a 5,000-square-foot plant in Amelia, but the setup is so basic that Danos executive Eric Danos believes they could be made at any modest industrial site and possibly on barges one day.
"These really are designed to be manufactured anywhere," he said.
Backed by the Coastal Conservation Association of Louisiana and the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the reef project near Port Fourchon sits atop a small island that disappeared under the waves in recent years. It’s now under about 6 feet of water, but old fishermen in the area considered the sliver of sand — one of many Louisiana islands called “Pelican Island” — a prime spot to snag redfish and trout, said Rad Trascher, CCA Louisiana’s vice president.
“When you talk to old-timers about Pelican Island, their eyes light up,” he said.
CCA asked Danos to make the reef no taller than 18 inches to avoid scraping the bottoms of boats. The group also wanted the modules to be shaped “with lots of nooks and crannies so organisms can attach themselves,” Trascher said.
As young oysters latch on and grow, the structure they build will function as both a fishery and habitat for other species, including redfish and blue crab. Oysters also function as natural water filters, cleaning the Gulf of excess nitrogen and sediment. And when storms roll in, oyster reefs act as speed bumps, slowing surges before they strike land.
The bay has been losing many of the marshes, inlets and islands that gave it the varied habitats that allow fish to thrive. Redfish used to gather in “fishing holes” amid the varied seascape during winter, Billiot said.
“But now those holes are gone, and we don’t have any fishing during winter,” he said.
The reef is the 49th the CCA has built on the Louisiana coast. Costing about $300,000 and taking about three days to install, the reef will cover around three underwater acres.
It won’t save the bay by itself, but at least one spot will soon be teeming with life, Trascher predicted.
“It’s amazing how fast the marine life finds these things,” he said. “It’ll soon have a plethora of marine species.”
Danos has spent the past 70 years providing services to the oil and gas industry, but the family-owned company has lately broadened its offerings. Cajun coral is a product of the company branching into the coastal restoration field. Danos has installed a handful of Cajun coral reefs, including one that protects a Shell-owned pipeline south of Houma.
“The canal it’s in was in danger from erosion, so we partly closed it up with a new reef,” Danos said. “It was amazing to watch the oysters almost immediately grow and solidify. The results were fantastic.”
There’s no shortage of other pipelines that may need added protection as the coastline unravels.
“Now we’ve just got to get to the other thousand miles of pipeline in south Louisiana,” he said.
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Story by Tristan Baurick, Photos by Brett Duke, The Times-Picayune
KATC News came out to take a look at our new Resilience Center of Excellence and get the details on what this means for our ability to deploy Adaptive Infrastructure solutions globally. For more detail on the facility, you can read this recent post:
And you can read the whole story at KATC.com:
Partnership with Louisiana-based Danos Produces Industrial Scale
Nature-Based Resilience Solutions to Worldwide Challenges
Climate technology company Natrx has officially begun production at a newly established manufacturing facility in Amelia, Louisiana. In partnership with Gulf Coast-based energy services provider, Danos, the 5,000 square foot facility enables large-scale, global deployment of the company’s patented, nature-based resilience technology called DryForming™.
DryForming is the innovative manufacturing process invented by the company’s co-founder and president, Matt Campbell, a Louisiana native and BioAgricultural Engineering graduate of LSU. The patented DryForming process is used to produce the company’s proprietary ExoForms™ — habitat-specific, interlocking module systems designed to improve shoreline resilience and promote biodiversity at landscape scale.
This new resilience center of excellence houses multiple DryForming units capable of producing 50,000 tons of ExoForm™ modules per year with performance equivalent to 500,000 tons of heavy rock, which would typically be purchased out of state. The Amelia facility is located strategically on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway with deep water barge access immediately creating opportunities for large-scale coastal resilience projects across the Gulf Coast and beyond.
In addition to ExoForm production, Natrx will use the facility to build, test, and deploy mobile DryForming units to help address resilience challenges around the world, beginning with an awarded coral restoration project off the coast of Waikiki, Hawaii.
“Louisiana is one of the areas in the country most impacted by coastal erosion, and it is also the birthplace of Natrx,” said Campbell. “It’s where Tyler Ortego, our General Manager for Coastal Solutions, and I met and where we first connected with Danos. The state's coastal erosion crisis, coupled with its commitment to finding breakthrough approaches to addressing these challenges, makes south Louisiana the ideal location for our new facility.
Danos, which has operated in the Gulf Coast region for 76 years, first connected with Natrx in 2019 after the recently launched company was selected for a start-up accelerator program in New Orleans hosted by Shell Energy. The ENERGYx program focused on emerging innovations for coastal construction and water management that improve the capital efficiency of on-the-ground projects.
“Our success depends on partners like Danos that recognize the value and vision of our technology,” said Leonard Nelson, Natrx CEO. “The operation in Louisiana owes much to their support, and having a base close to partners who are invested in our business and our mission will be truly beneficial.”
The companies have collaborated on asset protection and coastal restoration projects for clients across southern Louisiana including Shell, ConocoPhillips, Ducks Unlimited, the Coastal Conservation Association of Louisiana, and several public entities. Their breakthrough work together led to a significant early investment in Natrx by Danos Ventures and continues to fuel a productive partnership.
“Protecting vital coastlines and waterways in our region is a top priority for our customers and communities,” said Eric Danos, CEO of Danos Ventures. “By partnering with Natrx, we can maximize the adoption of innovative new technologies—delivering jobs and economic value locally and real impact globally.”
Small Business Innovation Research Program Funds R&D
to Fuel “Blue Carbon Economy”
RALEIGH, N.C. (Nov. 14, 2023) – Leading climate tech company Natrx has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to continue development of its remote-sensing technology designed to quantify the economic value of carbon stock in coastal wetlands. The $1 million award to advance Natrx’s Resilience for Waterfront Infrastructure (REWIRE) platform is also eligible for additional matching funds from NSF that would push the grant total to $1.7 million.
Natrx’s technology and data-driven approach to carbon and biodiversity accounting in wetland ecosystems will lead to the emergence of sustainable new business models. The REWIRE platform will also facilitate private financing of nature-based restoration projects that protect communities and fuel local economies. Natrx’s innovative approach integrates remotely-sensed and field-based data, and applies artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to map coastal erosion rates, blue carbon, and biodiversity at high spatial resolution.
“The REWIRE platform will be a critical tool in appraising the carbon value that exists in coastal areas,” said Leonard Nelson, CEO of Natrx. “We are deeply appreciative of the continued recognition and investment from NSF that will help unlock value that can lead to sustainable, blue carbon economies where they’re needed most.”
In 2021, Natrx was also awarded NSF funding for Phase I of this project. Phase I focused on the development of AI and geospatial software tools for assessing hyper-local, hydrodynamic and erosive conditions at high resolution.
As part of Phase II, the Center for Geospatial Analytics at North Carolina State University will help power the geospatial processing capabilities of the REWIRE approach using the GRASS GIS open-source software. Dr. Vaclav Petras, Research Software Engineer at NC State, will oversee integration of GRASS GIS APIs into REWIRE.
“The collaboration with Natrx allows us to contribute to open-source software development by enhancing the existing tooling, and contribute to open science by making more algorithms readily available,” said Dr. Petras.
All initiatives considered by the NSF for SBIR grants undergo a rigorous merit-based review. The program supports scientific excellence and technological innovation that is moving from the lab to the market.
Most of the world's coastal habitats are vulnerable to erosion which can have wide-ranging negative impacts on local economies. Enhancing shoreline resilience and biodiversity can unlock the value of coastal ecosystems by supporting nature-based infrastructure, sustainable fisheries, tourism, and clean water. These “blue economy” opportunities offer environmental benefits as well as social benefits of economic equity and environmental justice for low-income and underserved communities.
The work we're doing on the Pamlico River with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries was covered today by ABC News. They spent some time with our COO, Tad Schwendler, to understand the project, how our approach works, and what the project aims to achieve. The video they produced as well as the original article are available below.
We're thrilled that our advanced technology approach to delivering nature-based resilience and restoration is getting this kind of national attention. More attention will lead to more consideration of how to address these challenges. And more consideration, from us and from other innovative approaches, will be how we'll be able to make real impact.
(See the original story here at ABC News)
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Several acres of 3D-printed artificial reefs are currently being planted in coastal North Carolina to bolster the region's biodiversity and promote new growth of natural reef.
The reefs, 3-foot concrete cubes called "Exoforms" that contain a lot of void space to allow marine life to thrive, are being planted in the Palmico River, a large estuary system on North Carolina's Atlantic Coast, Tad Schwendler, COO of environmental solutions firm Natrx, told ABC News.
The roughness and irregularities of the structures leaves room for species at the bottom of the food chain, such as algae and other microorganisms, to grow, which then attract the larger species, Schwendler said.
The 15-acre installation is part of a two-year project by the Coastal Conservation Association of North Carolina and the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries,in Pamlico Sound and its tributaries. The deployment began on Oct. 20 and is expected to be complete by the end of the week.
The reef site will be one of 25 artificial reefs managed by the DMF. In May 2022, a similar artificial reef was deployed upstream, near the mouth of Bath Creek, Schwendler said.
The reefs will promote cleaner water and provide habitat for a variety of marine life, including fish, oysters, mussels, crustaceans and other invertebrates, Schwendler said. Important game fish, such as red drum, bass and speckled trout, are also expected to flock to the location once the reefs are settled and thriving.
Recreational fishing tends to cluster in certain locations in North Carolina, and promoting biodiversity in other parts of the state will allow that activity to spread out, Schwendler said.
"It's better for the ecosystem," he said.
The artificial reefs will also serve as skeletons for natural reefs to grow, Schwendler said. For the natural reefs to recur naturally, they need a substrate to grow upon, Schwendler said.
In recent years, coastal North Carolina has been experiencing environmental issues such as coastal erosion from sea level rise and more development along the coast.
"By creating these artificial reefs, it helps improve the resilience of our coastline, especially since a lot of the natural reefs in the U.S. have been lost over the years," Schwendler said.
The project is a prime example of using technology and natural systems to protect shorelines and make them more resilient, Schwendler said.
Natural systems are the most cost effective and environmentally friendly way to promote biodiversity, Schwendler said.
"These estuarine reef installations represent significant milestones in the use of adaptive infrastructure technology in North Carolina," Leonard Nelson, CEO of Natrx, said in a statement.
In addition to promoting biodiversity, artificial reefs have been found to capture carbon, according to a study published earlier this month by the Friends of the RGV Reef, a Texas-based conservation organization, and the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley.
The two-year study found that sponges and soft corals that cover the RGV Reef, the largest and most complex artificial reef off the Texas coast, do contain high amounts of carbon dioxide "in some significant proportion," the researchers found. Both the reef’s structure, the bottom or sediment, as well as the biomass, fish and other marine life in the water column, is capturing or trapping carbon, the scientists said.
A project that we've been working on in the Pamlico River with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries and the North Carolina Coastal Conservation Association was featured on WITN news this past week. We're proud this piece demonstrates how our custom-designed ExoForms™ can be an ideal part of building back biodiversity in coastal waterways, but we're also proud of how this piece demonstrates that it takes positive and productive partnerships to bring these projects to life.
View the original piece with video on WITN here.
By Deric Rush
Published: Oct. 20, 2023 at 5:53 PM CDT
Concrete Exoforms are 3D-printed cement artificial oyster reefs designed by Raleigh-based environmental engineering group Natrx and purchased by the Coastal Conservation Association of North Carolina.
Once the project is complete officials say the reef site will cover 15 acres of the Pamlico River. It is the second artificial reef deployment.
The reefs are being deployed in an effort to provide refuge for oysters, and important fish species such as red drum, and sheepshead for example.
Environmentalists say it’s important to promote biodiversity and vibrance within the river ecosystem.
“They actually lower those into the water and then you know in the next handful of months invertebrates and other things will start to kind of grow on there we’ll have some moisture settle on there next spring and they’ll be great places to fish you know by next summer,” said Jordan Byrum with NC Division of Marine Fisheries.
“There’s been years and years of decline in our fisheries here in North Carolina and I think habitat projects like this are essential so this is one of those steps that that we can take you know using partnerships like this with Natrx that we can actually have an impact on today,” added Matthew Wallin with Coastal Conservation Association.
The department says they plan to have the reefs deployed by the end of the month.
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