Now I only took science up to grade 13 in High School but I have to say even I could of predicted the outcome of this failed venture.

Divers Removing Failed Tire Reef Project

From cfnews13.com

It took only days to create what was touted as the world’s largest artificial reef in 1972, when a well-intentioned group dumped hundreds of thousands of old tires into the ocean.

But the tires turned out to be a reef killer, turning a swath of ocean floor the size of 31 football fields into a dead zone. Now divers expect to spend years hauling them to the surface.

Military crews began retrieving the tires this week from about 70 feet underwater, where they had broken loose from bundles and wedged along a natural reef. As of Thursday, they had pulled up about 1,600 of the estimated 700,000 tires that must be hauled to the surface.

The tires are “a constantly killing coral-destruction machine,” said William Nuckols, who is coordinating the cleanup. “They had to come up.”

The dumping of nearly 2 million tires began in 1972 with much fanfare by a group called Broward Artificial Reef Inc., which had the approval of the Army Corps of Engineers, support from Goodyear and help from hordes of volunteer boaters.

The project was intended to attract a rich variety of marine life while disposing of tires that were clogging landfills.

(full story)

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