The Osborne Reef is an artificially created reef off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida that is constructed using concrete dolos or concrete shaped like ‘jacks.’ Still popular today with divers, this artificial reef is made up of a wreckage of an old 60 foot barge, tires and concrete erojacks or dolos. The reason for the creation of artificial reefs in this area is due to the fact that the Boward county has a narrow low reef system which provides a very limited habitat for marine life. So to increase the fish population and to provide havens for marine life and coral growth a large number of structures have been sunk or built in the region resulting in fantastic dive sites with over 112 dive sites and around 40 freighters, tugboats and barges between 60-200 feet of water.
However the history of building the Osborne Reef, has been plagued by a series of ups and downs and has been both praised and criticized by environmentalists since the 70’s.
In 1972 a company called BARINC or Boward Artificial Reef Inc which had successfully created artificial reefs in several countries with the support of the US Army Corps of Engineers, deposited over two million tires bound by steel clips over 36 acres of the ocean floor at a depth of 65 feet underwater.
The project was a disaster, very little marine life migrated to the artificial reef, and those that did, didn’t stay long. The steel clips and nylon ropes that bound together the tires failed over time resulting in the tires drifting away with the slightest of swells and getting washed up on the beach or dragged away into the ocean. The two million tires floating around was an environmental disaster. They would smash into existing coral, litter beaches, and environmentalists were concerned that the tires were toxic causing more harm than good. Hurricanes would deposit tires as far away as North Carolina beaches resulting in severe concerns.
In 2001 and 2002 attempts were made to begin the long an arduous process of tire removal and retrieval which resulted in several millions being spent and not much success. In 2007 the US Military took up the project to remove the rouge tires and used the opportunity to train recovery divers in the process thereby reducing the estimated cost of $30 million down to $2 million for the project. Divers extract about 1,000 tires from Osborne Reef each day and are expected to continue doing so for the next three to five years. Their goal is to remove about 700,000 of the two-million tires from the reef.
photos by: sniffette, tiswango
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