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Old Subway Cars As Artificial Reef

Posted by kdawson on from the take-the-a-train-to-the-bottom dept.

Pickens writes "Hundreds of retired New York City subway cars are being sunk sixteen nautical miles off Delaware's Indian River Inlet and about 80 feet underwater, continuing the transformation of a barren stretch of ocean floor into a bountiful oasis, carpeted in sea grasses, walled thick with blue mussels and sponges, and teeming with black sea bass and tautog. 'They're basically luxury condominiums for fish,' says Jeff Tinsman, artificial reef program manager for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. Subway cars are roomy enough to invite certain fish, too heavy to shift easily in storms, and durable enough to avoid throwing off debris for decades. Tinsman particularly favors the newer subway cars with stainless steel on the outside to create reefs. 'We call these the DeLoreans of the deep,' he said. But success comes at a price because other states, seeing Delaware's successes, have started competing for the subway cars, which New York City provides free. 'The secret is out, I guess,' said Michael G. Zacchea, the MTA official in charge of getting rid of New York City's old subway cars."

6 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Very apt by Finallyjoined!!! · · Score: 4, Informative
    Nice one :-)

    littoral -adjective 1. of or pertaining to the shore of a lake, sea, or ocean.


    --
    If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
  2. In BC we sink old ships to make habitats... by WoTG · · Score: 4, Informative

    Out here we've sunken many ships to make underwater habitats for fish. The boats are stripped of oils, paints, and hazardous stuff before sinking -- well, nowadays, anyway. Great for scuba divers to look at, so I've been told.

    I can't find a great link in 10s of searching, but this is a start:
    http://www.divingbc.com/

    1. Re:In BC we sink old ships to make habitats... by Skater · · Score: 4, Informative

      Check out the fate of the aircraft carrier USS Orisanky. New York has been dropping subway cars this way for a long time: here are some pictures of Redbird cars being sunk this way several years ago (site requires Javascript so they can show you annoying sliding ads on both sides).

    2. Re:In BC we sink old ships to make habitats... by malkavian · · Score: 4, Informative

      Speaking as a Scuba Diver, these artificial reefs are great. It takes a few years to build up life, but eventually, it becomes a great habitat for a huge variety of life. Even in the early days, you get a lot of 'visitors' as fish start poking round in all the nooks and crannies.
      Over time, decay does set in, and the 'debris' does come loose. This isn't like street litter though. It tends to stay close to the wreck, and the fragments that are too small tend to rust away rather quickly, or be abraded to a sand.
      There are reasonably strict regulations on what can be dumped in as an artificial reef (oil, and all the nasty sea life killing stuff is removed first). And as far as studies go, there's a rich history of wrecks, some of which went down without any cleaning whatsoever, and they are invariably colonised quite rapidly by sea life. Empirical evidence is there aplenty. And with the newer reefs, there are many scuba divers frequenting them (and a good portion of scuba divers are very possessive of the environment, as we get to see the real damage done by running roughshod over it).

  3. Oh I hope they know what they are doing by slew · · Score: 5, Informative
    I remember a long time ago when people tried to dump old tires in the ocean with the thought that they could form the basis for an artificial reef. Apparently that didn't work out so well...

    Maybe it'll work out better this time...

  4. Re:Oceans need more man made stuff in them! by electrictroy · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've seen videos on History and Discovery Channel. It isn't one giant mass of garbage. It's a nice clear ocean, and then suddenly your ship will come-upon a ship-sized "mass" of accumulated garbage just floating in the middle of noplace. The ocean currents tend to gather trash in a few discrete locations (which should make it easy to clean-up, if any nation decided to take-on that task).

    re: Running out of cars.

    If they find themselves running out of New York subway cars, maybe they could try using passenger cars. We've got plenty of them laying around, just waiting to become a "fish condo".

    --
    The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.