Europe's first artificial surf reef -- built by a New Zealand company -- has been officially unveiled on the English coast at Dorset.
The three million stg ($NZ6.9m) project was originally due to be finished by December 2008, but construction was delayed until April this year due to bad weather.
Its cost to the Bournemouth council doubled as short days, cold sea temperatures and stronger currents than expected cut down the time New Zealand divers could spend underwater.
The reef was built by Raglan-based marine engineering company Amalgamate Solutions and Research (ASR) Ltd, for a council project to turn Bournemouth into a surfers' paradise and help generate $27 million a year for the local economy.
It was created to improve surfing conditions by using 55 sand-filled "geotextile bags", weighing 2500 tonnes and which were anchored 225m out to sea.
Surfer Sean Wade, 39, of Poole, told the BBC: "Yesterday it was licking -- it was really good.
"It's like nothing around the beach here because it's hollow. You don't get a really hollow wave on this coast."
ASR is constructing India's first coastal protection reef in Kovalam, in Kerala state, partly to protect the shoreline from coastal erosion during the monsoon season.
It planned to start several other reef projects in Europe, South Africa and the United States.
