Artificial reef communities undergo long periods of succession prior to becoming stable, but funding challenges often prevent post-deployment monitoring from evaluating long-term successional changes. The present study employed baited remote underwater video surveillance (BRUVS) to compare the species richness, diversity, abundance, and age structure of fishes across a 4-year-old artificial reef, a 41-year-old artificial reef, a representative natural reef, and a bare control in Nantucket Sound, MA, USA, to address whether the perceived success of an artificial reef can be determined 5 years after deployment. Results indicated that, while species richness and diversity were largely uniform throughout the Sound, fish appeared on camera 93.4% faster at artificial reef sites than they did at the bare sand control. Reef-associated fish were 103.7% more abundant on the older artificial reef than on the younger artificial reef. Therefore, although the younger artificial reef is in its fifth year of monitoring, abundances of economically important fishes on the reef may continue to increase in future years and current numbers may not accurately reflect reef success or failure. Future management plans should consider extending monitoring programs longer than 5 years and implementing temporal fishing closures on newly deployed reefs to facilitate earlier post-deployment community stabilization.
