http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080517/us_nm/subway_reef_dc

New York subway cars find new life on ocean floor

Quote :

" OCEAN CITY, Md (Reuters) - After four decades carrying millions of New Yorkers, 44 of the city's subway cars are now home to millions of fish. ADVERTISEMENT The worn-out cars were dumped on Friday into the Atlantic Ocean, 21 miles off the Maryland coast, to create an artificial reef, designed to attract fish for the state's lucrative sport-fishing industry. "These reefs provide quality habitat for marine life off our coast which benefits not only the environment but also local businesses," said Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan. The 18-ton stainless steel cars -- minus wheels, windows and doors -- were stacked two-high on a barge where a bucket crane with a specially designed hydraulic lift picked them up one by one and dropped them into 90 feet of water. As journalists watched from five smaller boats, the cars landed on their sides with a bang, and blew whale-like jets of spray as air escaped from their interiors. They disappeared a few seconds later beneath the gray-green waters. The cars, dating from 1964, were among 1,662 that have been retired by New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority and will be used by a number of states on the U.S. East Coast to create the reefs to buoy local fishing industries. Maryland plans four more subway-car reefs and since 2001 others have been created in Delaware and New Jersey waters from an earlier batch of about 1,200 cars released by the MTA. [b]Jeff Tinsman, Delaware's reef program coordinator, said a 600-car reef in that state's waters had increased the local fish population by 400 times, and boosted the number of angling trips to 13,000 a year from 300 before the reef was created. PREDATOR PROTECTION The reefs attract fish because they provide protection from predators, and generate food like mussels, shrimp and crabs that quickly colonize the structure. About 95 percent of the seabed off the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast is naturally bare sand, which is much less likely to attract fish, Tinsman said. Officials hope the new Maryland reef will become home to such inshore species as black sea bass, tautog and summer flounder. These in turn should attract game like marlin, tuna and dolphin and the recreational fishermen, who contribute about $1 billion a year to Maryland's economy. Martin Gary, a fisheries biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said some of the targeted species have been depleted by overfishing. He promised that officials will take steps to prevent that from happening again around the new reef by imposing rules on the size and number of fish that can be caught, and the seasons when they can be taken. Gary said the new reef, at a favorite local fishing ground called Jackspot, is deeper and farther from the shore than other subway-car reefs, and will hopefully attract inshore fish and the deep-water migratory species that feed on them. Any environmentally hazardous materials including PCBs and petroleum lubricants were removed from the cars by the MTA at a cost of $8,000 per car to comply with federal government regulations. The nonprofit Ocean City Reef Foundation paid $600 per car to transport them 30-hours from New York City to create the reef. In their final resting place -- where they are expected to last 40 years or so -- the subway cars begin another useful life, Gary said. "It's hard to believe they were in service as little as 10 days ago.""

kudos to maryland, deleware, new jersey...finally a use of taxpayer money(i guess its taxpayer money at least) to pay for something cool and beneficial...i cant remember the last time i read an article and just felt like that its weird....weird enough for me to think its threadworthy...think of the potential of this...95 percent is nothing...only thing is i hope it doesnt increase great white sharks

the thing that makes me most happy is that tuna has been going up a lot since 2003...i hope this increases supply and drives down prices

5/18/2008 4:17:06 AM

Some idiots tried creating artificial reefs out of old tires back in the 70's.

It was one of the worst ecological disasters in history.

Quote :

"In North Carolina, where every powerful storm sweeps a few hundred tires onto the beach, the state sends prison inmates in trucks to pick them up. State workers also collect tires, and the state has paid shrimp boaters to haul them up. Of the 700,000 or so tires dumped off the North Carolina coast, about 180,000 have been recovered - including old truck tires, airplane tires and whitewalls that went out of style in the 1960s. "It's unbelievable what went overboard," said James Francesconi, North Carolina's artificial reef coordinator. "We don't do tires anymore. And I encourage no one else to put another piece of freaking rubber in the ocean again." "

[Edited on May 18, 2008 at 6:39 AM. Reason : 2]

5/18/2008 6:34:52 AM

yeah, i was gonna say..... theoretically this sounds kind of cool, i guess.
but 1) really, all it is is dumping a whole bunch of trash into the ocean, regardless if it is just stainless steal
2) the law of unintended consequences is a bitch

5/18/2008 11:01:15 AM

I think it'll work a bit better though with heavier units like subway cars assuming that they've been stripped down correctly. We've done this many times before with large vehicles and vessels: the navy did this with several warships including the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany (CV-34) while the army did it with old M60 main battle tanks.

5/18/2008 2:14:57 PM

All you need is a start for it, and it will spread on its own.

I see nothing wrong with this.

As long as these things are cleaned before they are set in place its fine by me. Creates a resource that uses our trash to create profit and life.

5/18/2008 2:59:19 PM

id much rather see that steel recycled and used again to keep commodity prices down but whatever

5/18/2008 3:57:43 PM

we need a ban on garbage disposals. i think that could solve some problems.


















lol

5/18/2008 4:28:15 PM

im ok with this idea

Quote :

"only thing is i hope it doesnt increase great white sharks "

Not likely man. Great whites main source of food is large sea mammals, ie seals n sea lions. the reef eco-system will not attract those kinds of mammals. Seals and sea lions hang out near rocky coasts, most noticeably like the coasts of the pacific US, South America, Australia, South Africa etc. Wherever there are large sea mammal populations in a moderate sea climate, there will be large great white populations. A reef eco-system, as stated in the article, will attract prey fish for game fish, which in turn will attract the sharks that feed on game fish....blue sharks, makos, reef sharks etc (depending on climates.

i always fancied myself into sharks

[Edited on May 18, 2008 at 10:20 PM. Reason : .]

5/18/2008 10:20:01 PM

^^idk i dont see that making a huge difference at all

[Edited on May 18, 2008 at 10:21 PM. Reason : ^ahhhhhh ok]

5/18/2008 10:20:41 PM

yeh that was sarcasm dnl.

5/18/2008 11:25:07 PM

oops i meant the person above you

5/18/2008 11:52:12 PM

Quote :

"1) really, all it is is dumping a whole bunch of trash into the ocean, regardless if it is just stainless steal 2) the law of unintended consequences is a bitch"

reef sinks are meticulously cleaned before being dropped in open water. ALL hazardous materials are very very carefully removed and verified. It's actually really damn expensive to turn most ships into reef candidates because of the cleaning expense.

5/19/2008 1:25:02 AM

Quote :

"the navy did this with several warships including the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany (CV-34)"

it took forfuckingever and went way overbudget, too, due to making it ecologically "clean" being WAY more involved than they'd expected.

^yep


i can't wait to dive it, though!

[Edited on May 19, 2008 at 7:49 PM. Reason : asdfasd]

5/19/2008 7:48:54 PM

I'd rather it take a long time and cost a lot of money so they aren't just dumping a toxic waste pile on the ocean floor which will poison marine life. Hell, we are doing PLENTY of that already.

5/19/2008 8:00:35 PM

i wasn't arguing otherwise

i'm just saying it's not a magic pill

5/19/2008 8:29:25 PM

I don't understand the need for artificial reefs if reefs don't exist in the location naturally.

5/19/2008 8:35:01 PM

Quote :

"I see nothing wrong with this."

I think its fantastic!

5/19/2008 9:47:13 PM