Slashdot Mirror
Old Subway Cars As Artificial Reef
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."
Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
I thought scrap metal values had gone insane recently - I know this is a sort of recycling, but I'm surprised the cars aren't worth a lot for the steel.
As far as I recall, asbestos is really only dangerous to human lungs because, when "disturbed" in an open air environment, it disperses into rather tiny particles that annoy your lungs rather severely.
I'm not sure entirely what relevance that has to a water environment, except that it seems fish's gills work significantly differently than human lungs.
Just another crappy blog
usually it is those with the most limited resources that come up with those kinds of ideas.
Just another crappy blog
...there'd been some kind of situation, perhaps a war, that had deposited large numbers of relatively stable metal objects on the sea floor, where their effect on local flora and fauna could be studied over, say, 63 years.
All of these "artificial reef" projects seem questionable to me.
The idea that tossing junk into offshore waters is beneficial... well, as the Church Lady used to say, "Isn't that convenient?"
In the 1970s, there was a similar project in Florida, involving discarded tires. The system used to hold the tires in place failed after a few years, tires started to come loose, the fact that it wasn't stable made it a failure as an artificial reef, mildly toxic stuff started to leech out of the tires, and the whole thing was an environmental disaster. The process of cleaning up the tires, now in progress, is expensive and labor-intensive. Read about it here
The sea is a very corrosive environment. Before starting this project, did anyone check to see whether there are any subway cars that have already been in the ocean for a few decades to see what's happened to them?
In the case of these subway cars, I'd worry about copper. Copper is deadly poison to most marine organisms. It's the bane of people who try to set up salt-water aquaria.
I notice that the article doesn't say that the subway cars contained no electric wiring. Nor does it say that all the copper was removed from them before scuttling them.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
like hydrocarbon grease and lubricant, paints and coatings with possibly toxic compounds, the plasticizers and antioxidants in the plastic and foam,......
you could keep an entire university of scientists busy for years
and alot of the stuff is probably, if you look hard, sourced from china, so it may not even be what it is supposed to be, eg very very toxix pbbs (poly brominated biphenyls) are banned in civilized countrys..
scrap steel metal only very recently became really expansive (within the last two monthes).
look at the fourth column for scrap steel price. See how much it rose in the last 2-3 monthes and over last year.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Are there any images/video of this "continent sized" garbage patch? Not a single reference link from the Wikipedia page contained an actual photograph of this garbage patch. If this garbage patch is actually twice the size of the United States, surely someone has photographed it?
I'm beginning to think it's more of a headline, than a reality. I don't doubt there is an unacceptable level of garbage floating around out there, but it shouldn't be asking much to have some direct evidence of it. So far, it's only been proven indirectly through garbage washing up on shore and anecdotal evidence. That's all well and good, but that hardly proves a CONTINENT. It's that size comparison that bothers me the most.
"Arrr, I curse the shark that stole me leg." -PegLegPete
People have sunk objects with the purpose of protecting coasts for hundreds of years. For example see http://www.vitiaz.ru/congress/en/thesis/149.html. Also there is a big ship that was sunk in front of Venice hundreds of years ago to limit the tidal effects.