In our last piece, we looked at some of the artificial reefs in American coastal waters that started with proud ships that served one of the military branches. In this piece, we take a look at reefs that are made of other structures besides — but sometimes including! — ships.
Redbird Reef
Further north of most of the reefs in our last piece, New York City subway cars decommissioned and decontaminated are sunk into the ocean about 16 miles off the coast of Delaware. Part of the Delaware Artificial Reef Program, the structure traces its humble origins to 1996 and now spans 1.3 miles of territory, 80 feet below the surface. More than 700 of the “Redbird” subway cars, which got their name from their red paint, rest there and are joined by 86 tanks, eight tugboats and barges, a fishing trawler, and truck tires.
As Jeffrey Tinsman, the Delaware Reef program coordinator, explained to Day 6, removing the glass, seats, and signs enables water to move through each subway car, so “you get good water quality, and you get the larvae of these invertebrates, like blue mussels that are attached to the whole surface of the car almost like a carpet.”
Because these mussels support 30 to 40 species of invertebrates, shrimp, crabs, and worms, “there’s about 400 times as much food for fish per square foot as there is in the natural sand bottom.”
In July, the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control’s Division of Fish and Wildlife contributed two additions to the reef. The MARAD TD-21 was one of 100 86-foot-long tugboats constructed in 1943 for the Defense Plant Corporation to assist domestic shipping vessels entering American ports during World War II.
Meanwhile, the Mayor J. Harold Grady was a fireboat with a 6,000-gallon-per-minute pumping capacity used by the City of Baltimore. Named for the mayor when launched in 1960, it played a major role in fighting the 1968 Baltimore Inner Harbor fire.
Photo Courtesy Delaware DNREC
Wreck Alley
While Wreck Alley is home to the biggest number of intentionally sunken ships off Southern California’s West Coast, including a U.S. Coast Guard cutter called the Ruby E and a Canadian destroyer called the HMCS Yukon, its depths also host various other types of artificial reefs. Old sets of train wheels and A P-38 plane are just the beginning.
After the old Ingraham Street Bridge was demolished in the 1990s, some of its cement and rebar remnants and metal railing structures were added to Wreck Alley by the California Department of Fish & Game’s Artificial Reef Program. It now grows Gorgonian sea fans and attracts eels and octopuses.
Meanwhile, the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC) Tower was a 100-foot-tall research center and monitoring tower built in 1959 to conduct acoustic, biological, electromagnetic, and wave propagation studies.
There was even an infrared radiation thermometer to measure the temperature of the surface water.
The NOSC tower continued to serve that purpose until a storm ripped the top right off in the winter of 1988. Its lower half remains standing and has been referred to as an “underwater jungle gym,” featuring creatures like mussels, scallops, blacksmith fish, and kelp bass.
Photo Courtesy FASTILY
Neptune Memorial Reef
Neptune Memorial Reef is about as far from being made of ships as a reef can get. It is meant to look like Atlantis, the fabled, utopian island nation dreamed up by Plato that submerged into the Atlantic in the philosopher’s story as a warning against hubris. The underwater mausoleum provides an opportunity for people to plan for the ashes of loved ones and pets to be converted into placements to be scattered across a resting place that will eventually take up 16 acres, located approximately three miles offshore from Key Biscayne and 40 feet below the surface.
Since 2007, about 1,500 placements have found homes in the Neptune Memorial, but there will eventually be enough capacity for 250,000.
Created specifically to be non-polluting, it received approval from national entities, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It also got the green light from local agencies like the Department of Environmental Resources Management of Miami and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Made of concrete, the structures were designed to withstand tropical storms. Now, it says it is a “rainforest of sea life,” featuring 700 species of coral, 4,000 species of fish, and a variety of other marine wildlife and vegetation. Moray eels, parrotfish, and spiny lobsters are just a few of the creatures to have settled down there!
Photo Courtesy Neptune Memorial Reef
Keeping it Wild: The Campaign for Texas
Although not as interesting as human and animal ashes, concrete is another common material in artificial reefs. In 2017, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation received support from the Coastal Conservation Association’s (CCA) Building Conservation Trust, CCA Texas, the Texas Artificial Reef Program, and Shell Oil Company to place two new reefs six miles off the coast of Port O’Connor, about 66 to 70 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico.
About 700 2,500-pound pyramids made of concrete now lay across the two adjacent reefs spanning 381 acres of seafloor.
Dale Shively, who led the Texas Artificial Reef Program at the time, expressed in the press release that “these new artificial reefs have all the features needed to attract a variety of marine species.” Indeed, with limestone on the outside for worms and invertebrates to dig their way into, holes big enough for fish to swim into, and one at the top large enough for sea turtles to escape out of, the reefs do not turn any creatures away.
Photo Courtesy Shell Oil Company
