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USNS Hoyt S. Vandenberg To Be Sunk For a Reef
caffiend666 writes "On Wednesday the USNS Hoyt S. Vandenberg is to be sunk in 140 feet of water off of Key West to become the world's second largest artificial reef. (The largest was created by sinking the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany off of Pensacola, Florida, in 2006.) The Vandenberg was built in 1943 (chronology) and commissioned the USS Gen. Harry Taylor. In 1963 the Air Force took it over and recommissioned it, naming it after the Air Force general. For decades the ship served as a missile tracker and space relay. It was used in NASA's Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects and the Shuttle program. The Vandenberg was the set for some of the scenes in the '90s movie Virus as the Russian MIR relay station. Soon it will become one of the world's most awesome diving spots."
It's interesting. Plus, we all like arguing over the environment and this is a perfect article for that. just wait for "how come the government is allowed to dump its old stuff in the sea and the rest of us have to pay for disposal?"
It's being paid for by people who want to use it. Most of the preparations required for turning it into a diving target/reef are also required to drag it somewhere to be scrapped.
It was a reserve fleet ship; there's been a big push to dispose of most of them in the past five years or so. Remember those ships floating about through New Orleans during Hurricane Gustav? Yep, at a shipyard being prepped for scrapping.
"Plus, we all like arguing over the environment and this is a perfect article for that."
Not really, considering that dumping a cleaned and purged hull as a home for marine life isn't the same as sinking a dirty ship or dumping pollutants.
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The recreational limit is 130 feet. So you won't be able to look at the very bottom of the hull. The rest will be much higher. Even beginners will be able to hover over the deck.
Yeah, like almost a whole *gasp* year.
Except that according to the wiki page on the ship (already linked above) the draft of the Vandenberg is 24' and it's 71.5' wide. Add to that a significant amount of freeboard and superstructure (judging by the picture). Not sure how close that would put the top of the ship to standard recreational diving limits (~60') but PADI Advanced Open Water (AOW) cert allows for diving up to ~100' and the "deep diver" certifications (130') putting most of the ship within reach.
Assuming the wikipedia article on the ship is true, then the ship is currently owned by bankers and not the government.
I can't help thinking though the ancient tradition of the captain going down with the ship should be applied here, since the captains will be bankers. There's no better place for bankers than Davy Jones Locker.
Steel is quite good to recycle.
It takes about 25 gigajoules of energy per tonne to make steel, but if you recycle it you can get back 18 gigajoules per tonne.
In carbon emissions it takes 2 tonnes of CO2 to a tonne and you get back about 1.5 tonnes.
If most of the boat is steel that makes 9,000 tonnes of steel wasted , 163 petajoules of energy wasted or 13500 tonnes of CO2 emitted for an artificial reef.
The energy is around the same required to run a 1 GW power station for almost a day.
Just clarifying the parent post in case any real beginners are reading: Recommended for beginners is 60'/18m approx. With the next step up (assuming PADI or equivalent, then you'll need Advanced Open Water), then yep, 130/40m is the absolute maximum, with a recommended max of 100'/30m (for those that bounce that extra few feet up and down, and don't keep a close eye on the depth gauge). Also note, many holiday travel insurances will only cover you to 100' (30m).
Spend any time at 40m, and just make sure you know what you're doing; deco stops come into play very quickly.
According to some sources, dumping iron in the ocean actually stimulates plankton growth.
Not sure if iron administered in ship form will have the same effect though.
It is swimable though and it's not an unimpressive sight, but I hope the waters of the Key are less violent than that of Wellington, New Zealand.
Sure, I'd imagine the number of geek divers might is pretty limited, but I do know a few.
It's actually quite a geeky activity. Although being unfit makes decompression sickness more likely, it's not an activity that requires much in the way of physical prowess. There's maths in those dive tables, or if you prefer gadgets there's dive computers. Not that there's not plenty of gadgetry involved in the breathing apparatus side of things.
Then there's the geekery of exploring a different world - it's amazing what's there underwater. And (as PADI put it) "floating weightless like an astronaut" (which you don't really, but there you go).
The thing that scares me more is geeks who think they can second guess the tolerances in the dive tables. I'd rather turn my brain off and obey them to the letter.
...not so much for fishermen.
Where I'm at we try to sink ships like these (steel ships) on or near fish breeding grounds. This will accomplish two things. First it'll provide refuge for fish and second it'll discourage fishing there. Trawlers can't fish if there's a big ship there. The trawls will break if they try so most stay well clear of sites like this.
Experts say that about 90% of all "large fish" are now gone so we need to do something about overfishing. This is "something" although not nearly enough.
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The recreational limit is 130 feet. So you won't be able to look at the very bottom of the hull.
Unless you're trained by an agency that includes deeper and more adventurous diving. BSAC, for example, will certify experienced divers down to 55m on air. Decompression stops are introduced (although briefly) to entry-level divers and deco planning is an essential part of training.
To put the depth in context, one of most popular wrecks, the SS President Coolidge sits at about 70m but there are dives available for all abilities. 45m seems about right for a wreck of this size and I look forward to diving it in a few years time.
I got my PADI certification in Hawaii and for the "deep" dive, we went out to where the U of H had sunk a research vessel that had once been a minesweeper. It was sitting upright at 100ft and that was an experience nothing to date had prepared me for: we descended down and down and suddenly this enormous black shape appeared right below me, and there was this ship, in all its sunken glory.
Standing on the ocean floor, looking up at the ship from "ground" level, was wild. I'm not certified to do the kind of diving you'd need for the Vandenberg, but if I thought swimming over a minesweeper was a mind-blowing experience, I can't imagine what something like that Vandenberg would be.
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As a scuba diver myself, I've never been terribly impressed with wreck diving. Oh, I suppose it would be interesting to dive on a historical wreck, as you are experiencing a part of history.
But when they take an old ship, strip it to dilapidated wreckage you wouldn't take money to set foot on while it was floating, and sink it, suddenly I'm supposed to be all excited about seeing it underwater.
I guess you could say that all the wildlife it attracts is what is really interesting to dive on, but then, why not dive on a natural reef?
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Except for apparently about the only way the steel is worth more than the cost of disassembly is when you send it to India. And then you get stuff like this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13443629/
Where they pay a bunch of workers the bare minimum to wade through the asbestos and other chemicals, risking fire and falling, and leave the leftovers on the beach. I'm not sure the environmental and human cost of these operations makes the energy savings for the steel really pay off.
Of course, I'm all for finding better ways to scrap ships, but the cost of steel right now is low enough there isn't a ton of a market.
I'm no reef expert, but these things take a really long time to have coral start growing on these to the point where you'd want to go diving down to see them.
For some time, this will be a recognisable ship - that's a cool thing to dive around in itself. Wreck diving is a fairly popular specialisation.
In addition, while coral takes a long time to grow, other plant life takes hold much more quickly, and fish will seek refuge anywhere there's shelter. Go snorkeling somewhere sandy - if you want to see fish, you'll need to find a boulder.
Finally, coral does take hold in human timescales. When Bali started attracting tourists, they quarried coral reefs to build hotels, with diasterous results - not only were the reefs lost, but it resulted in serious beach erosion. The practice was banned but the damage was done. Where I stayed, they had dumped huge concrete blocks where the reef used to be. Already coral was recolonising, anenomes and tropical fish were everywhere. It'll take years before it fully recovers - but not thousands of years, or even hundreds.
Interesting that you'd mention PADI, though.... the deepest they certify recreational divers is 40m. 130 feet. And they recommend that you never go over 100 feet. If you want to dive a wreck that's in 140 feet of water
Good points, but I have a critique. There was a Japanese sub that sank off the coast of Hawaii that people dove. It was in about 140 feet of water, but the top deck was at 110 feet. Remember, unless your suicidal or stupid (or working for the Discovery Channel), you don't actually go under or into the wreck; you just go near it and around it. For PADI, wreck dives are one of their advanced courses.
That said, too many untrained divers went to the Japanese sub and went all the way to the floor and had decompression issues. The sub was eventually raised, towed out deeper (way outside of recreation diving range), and sank again. I hope either 1) this ship is bigger (taller) or 2) they have better precautions in place.