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."
This shore is a good idea! (speaking littorally of course)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
You fools! If the dolphins develop time travel there will be no stopping them!
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
1. dump some old trash in the previously perfectly fine ocean
2. ???
3. LUXURY CONDOMINIUMS FOR FISH
Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
Getting mugged by a harpoon weilding, cowry shell demanding aquatic gang member. Insane.
Task Mangler
I actually read this article earlier today (they're coming for my slashdot credibility card!) and it mentioned the amount of asbestos and other materials in the cars. Does anyone know how that comes into play in a marine environment?
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Please keep it there!
With an eye on recycling materials and reducing construction costs for storage cellars, some wineries in northern Mexico have opted for this great idea:
Dig a deep trench, place old RR cars inside, then fill the trench up again with dirt. And there it is, a cave build like a Lego. A little bit of retrofitting may be necessary, especially where car doors meet, but still, you can save a ton of money in this fashion.
Surely, not only Mexican wineries are using the same technique.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
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.
Brisbane,QLD has had an old Brisbane Transport tram as part of the Curtin Artificial Reef since 1981.
http://www.urgq.org/curtin_artif_reef.htm
"A new discovery by our great leader shows ancient American maps may be off by 200 miles, our great leaders scientists believe New York may have been situated at the opening of the Delaware Bay; alternative theories suggest these submerged relics may have been attributed somehow to experiments at the Black Mesa facility (formerly CERN-LHC) in 2009"
[history] (net.earth.news) 34899 points posted 3 mars hours ago by GreatLeaderHalliburton retaliates against France!
"The Great Leader has sent supporting troops to support Halliburton forces in retaliation following French aggression last week against the sovereign nation. Live holostream and kill-cam with Geraldo Rivera's clone from 7pm."
[worldnews] (net.earth.actualités) 19148 points posted 5 mars hours ago by GreatLeaderOut 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/
Hoopla, I tried for ten minutes find anything about the negative impacts of artificial reefs, using Google Scholar ( http://scholar.google.com/ ).
I used "artificial" and "reefs" in combinations with words like "bioaccumulation", "pcb", "tyres", "pollutants", "chemicals", etc.
Surprisingly, I only found statements like "needs more research", "no measurable effect" and no-brainers like that.
Could it be that I missed those true alarmist reports I guessed would be there?! One read like:
http://www.flseagrant.org/program_areas/ecosystem_health/artificial_reefs/index.htm#21
"The oil ash and control reefs were constructed with the aid of divers in just one day, and monitoring of the reefs was carried out for one year. Leaching of trace metals from the blocks was extremely slow, and only limited instances of enhanced bioaccumulation of metals were observed. However, pressure from environmental groups led the electric power industry and the State of Florida to discontinue construction of artificial reefs from stabilized waste material."
I don't want to play this in the hands of waste mongers, but hope some could actually find some more conclusive results.
Don't get me wrong. Play it safe, please.
.
Maybe it'll work out better this time...
Wouldn't make much of a difference either way to global warming.
To the degree it increases marine biomass, it's just as effective as increasing any OTHER biomass for capyuring CO2. So in theory it would decrease global warming.
Much too small an effect to be measurable.
It -has- been suggested that spreading iron on the ocean in areas where lack of iron is the limiter on plant-growth would allow much more plants to grow and thus capture a lot of CO2. I think the biggest uncertanity there was for how -long- the CO2 would stay out of the atmosphere.
If a significant fraction of the dead plants sink, retention would be good, hundreds of years at the very least. If most of them decompose near the surface and the CO2 is released from the water, there wouldn't be much benefit.
Did no-one else notice the most important part of this story?
You can get subway cars for free!
I'll have five, thanks.
They should do this with barrels of nuclear waste too.
Artificial reefs have not been a universal success. The State of Florida is spending millions to clean up dumped tires from the Osborne Reef.
Statesman
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
Due to diffusion, you really shouldn't get pockets of concentrated copper-water. Nature dislikes concentration gradients (Fick's Law of Diffusion).
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
That is because the tires are causing more hard then good. The subway cars allow more natural things to grow on them and hide in them. And the subway cars will go away over time leaving the natural stuff behind. Virginia has been doing this for what 5-8 years now? It does work to bring more fish to the area. The summer flounder numbers were way up (along with black sea bass, and others) until the commercial guys dragged their nets through the reef locations. These artificial reef locations are off limits to commercial fishing it is posted on all the charts. So, they just dumped a bunch of tanks off the cost as well.
They used tanks since the commercial fishing guys were dragging their nets all through the subway cars and other off limit (for commercial fishing) places. They lose more gear on the tanks and will hopefully stop 'fishing' there.
i shouldn't have been so lazy, but they are the same trains!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbird_trains
"Most Redbirds were phased out from 2001 to 2003 and replaced by the new R142 and R142A cars. 1,208 Redbirds have been sunk at sea off the coasts of Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Virginia as artificial reefs to promote marine life, to serve as a barrier and to enhance recreational scuba diving. Delaware received 558 cars, Georgia 50, New Jersey 250, South Carolina 200, and Virginia 150. An episode of CSI NY titled "The Deep" used these cars as part of the story line, and even featured well-repkucated underwater shots of mockups of the cars. However, the show places them in the East River of New York City."
If you had RTFA you would had read that this is not new. The site off the cost of DE has had subway cars for about 10 years now. With an increasing number of people going their every year. And the subway cars are just the shell, no seats, no plastics, no oils, no wiring just the main metal of the car.
Here is another article: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE7DA153EF93BA15757C0A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all Where they actually say what they do to the cars.