An ambitious project to restore and rewild damaged marine habitats off the Sussex coast in the UK has resulted in the installation of a tiered concrete structure, specially designed to shelter crustaceans. The Minter Hotel was the dream of former Sussex fisherman Alan Minter, who spent more than two years sorting out the necessary permissions, getting the construction made and arranging its installation.
A team of volunteer divers from Sussex Underwater helped lower the 3.5-tonne structure to the seabed off the town of Lancing at the end of May 2025. Eric Smith, co-founder of Sussex Underwater, says: “Our intention along with the scientist Dr Ray Ward (a marine scientist from Queen Mary University, London) is to monitor the structure to see how long it takes nature to colonise it, and to provide our followers with regular updates. We hope to install a camera on it in the future so schools and others can tune in to the underwater world live.”
A ban on trawl fishing along large stretches of the English county’s west coast was imposed in 2021, to restore and protect environmentally important kelp forests. An extra benefit of the ban has been to stop the damage to the ocean floor caused by dredging. This is one factor that had devastated the habitat of small marine life in the area over many years.
Alan Minter’s family has been fishing the Sussex waters for many generations and Minter himself for more than 40 years. The 67-year-old’s ambition in retirement is to, “put something back. We all know the state of the sea – you've lost the beach, the sand, the inshore reef,” he says. “Nature is really struggling to hang in there and survive. We're just trying to help it along a little bit.”
The charity dive operation Sussex Underwater has been documenting the recovery of the county’s marine environment following the 2021 ban. Now this three-dimensional structure has given it an additional focus, and the creatures that will inhabit it – cuttlefish, squid, lobsters and brown crab – a welcome helping hand. Minter and the team hope that with local business backing and support it will become the first of a string of bespoke crustacean accommodation that will eventually be dotted along the southern English coast.
At the UN Ocean Conference in June 2025, 50 countries ratified a High Seas Treaty that aims to put 30 per cent of the world’s international waters into marine protected areas. At the same conference many nations came forward to pledge an end to damaging fishing practices in their waters. The Minter Hotel may be a small step for one area of the UK, but hopeful moves are afoot to address damage inflicted to the ocean floor and help marine life to recover in a much wider, global way.
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Watch Alan Minter and the team discussing the installation of the crustacean hotel here.
Top image: Installing the crab hotel on the Sussex coastline (credit: Picture Book Films)
