Ask anyone who fishes Alabama’s coastal waters where to find the best artificial reef habitat in the country, and the answer comes back without hesitation: here. Alabama’s nearshore and offshore waters hold more artificial reefs than anywhere else in the world, and behind much of that buildup stands a Texas-born conservation group whose Alabama chapter has spent nearly five decades turning anglers’ dollars into fish habitat.
The Coastal Conservation Association — CCA — began in Houston in 1977 as an independent, nonprofit advocacy organization devoted to conserving saltwater resources along the Gulf Coast. Alabama became its first state chapter outside Texas, and today the organization’s reach extends across the Gulf Coast, the Atlantic seaboard and the Pacific coast, with more than 120,000 members nationwide. Alabama now counts eight chapters and more than 2,200 members of its own.
From GCCA to CCA
Longtime coastal residents may remember the organization under its original Gulf-only name, the Gulf Coast Conservation Association. When Florida joined, the scope of its programs stretched beyond the Gulf, and the name changed to match. The expansion kept going: a Music City chapter in Nashville was founded by John Frank, who had so much fun at a CCA event in Orange Beach that he petitioned the national office in Houston until Tennessee got its own chapter.
Blakeley Ellis has led CCA Alabama as executive director since 2014. A Gulf Shores and Orange Beach native who grew up fishing with his father, Gary Ellis, he volunteered for years raising money for the artificial reef program before taking the top job. Conservation, he says, was always the career plan.
The reef program that became a model
Alabama’s artificial reef program is the backbone of the state’s saltwater fishery, and CCA has been one of its most consistent private partners. “We have more artificial reefs along the coast of Alabama than any other place in the world,” Ellis said. Materials range from rip rap and decommissioned railroad box cars to concrete and prefabricated reef pyramids, deployed inshore, nearshore and up to 55 nautical miles offshore across roughly 1,060 square miles of permitted waters — the largest artificial reef program in the United States.
The work accelerated after crisis. When the BP oil spill shut down Gulf waters in 2010, everything stopped, Ellis recalled — and in the aftermath, CCA Alabama partnered with the Alabama Wildlife Federation to draft a statewide artificial reef plan that helped the state secure Restore Act funds from spill penalties. The program has since drawn tens of millions of dollars in oil-spill restoration money, funding new reef zones in state waters, new deployments and ongoing research.
That research matters because reefs are not interchangeable. Scientists track how fish use structures at each depth — inshore, nearshore, offshore — which corresponds to different stages in the life cycles of different species. The data tells managers which reef types produce the most fish and how far apart to space them, because reefs placed too close together are less productive. Eight new reef zones designated in state waters between six and nine miles offshore were named in honor of renowned Alabama marine scientists and conservation groups, including one bearing CCA Alabama’s name, and the organization has contributed partial or full funding for 17 of the 27 artificial reef zones in state waters.
Science first
CCA Alabama’s research partnerships run through the University of South Alabama’s marine sciences program. The organization funds a fish-tagging effort called Tag Alabama, has backed tagging studies of cobia and bull redfish, and supports graduate student research at South Alabama under Dr. Sean Powers — including a fund named for longtime department chair Bob Shipp that gives students money for thesis work and conference travel.
The state’s Gordon Persons Hatchery near the Gulf Shores airport is another beneficiary. There, crews raise southern flounder, speckled trout and Florida pompano for release into coastal waters, and CCA funding buys what state budgets do not: chillers to hold water temperatures steady, and square grow-out tanks that flounder handle better than round ones. In a recent year the hatchery released more than 100,000 juvenile flounder off the Alabama coast.
Those private dollars stretch further than they appear to. Every manufacturer of fishing tackle, rods, reels, boats and motors pays a federal excise tax into the Sport Fish Restoration Fund before products reach stores, and each dollar CCA Alabama raises is matched two to one from that fund. Over the past five years, roughly $250,000 raised by CCA for the hatchery has drawn $500,000 in matching money.
Changing the angler mindset
Ellis credits the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources with sound management, pointing to measures such as the November closure of flounder season while the fish move offshore to spawn. The harder work, he says, is cultural: convincing anglers that catching a limit is not the measure of a successful day on the water. He harks back to his Eagle Scout training — leave it better than you found it, whether the subject is beaches, fishing or conservation. For retired anglers, CCA’s Senior Science Program keeps them connected to the resource through citizen-science opportunities.
Where the money comes from
Three funding streams keep the organization running: in-person and online fundraisers and auctions, a state license plate program that returns $42 of every $50 plate fee directly to CCA Alabama, and the annual fundraising banquet built around a live auction, silent auction and raffle. Each year Ellis attends I-Cast in Orlando, the world’s largest fishing-tackle trade show, where member manufacturers — most of them part of CCA’s Corporate Conservation Partners program — donate merchandise that fetches strong prices at Alabama auctions.
His parting advice for anyone heading into Gulf waters is unchanged: “Pack your patience and pack a plan. Be observant and learn from your mistakes.”
For an organization that started as a handful of Texas anglers in 1977, CCA Alabama has grown into one of the most consequential conservation voices on the Gulf — and the reefs rising off Alabama’s shores are the visible proof of what that advocacy builds.