A group of retired NYC subway cars are now swimming with the fishes - they’re being used to create artificial reefs to buoy local fishing industries on the East Coast. Forty four subway cars found their final resting place on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean last Friday, 21 miles off the coast of Maryland. The reef is designed to attract fish for the state’s lucrative sport-fishing industry, which contributes about $1 billion per year to Maryland’s economy. Ocean City Mayor, Rick Meehan says that the reefs will provide quality habitat for marine life off the coast, benefiting not only the environment, but also local business.

The 18-ton stainless steel cars minus wheels, windows and doors were stacked two-high on a barge where a bucket crane with a specially designed hydraulic lift picked them up one by one and dropped them into 90 feet of water.

As journalists watched from five smaller boats, the cars landed on their sides with a bang, and blew whale-like jets of spray as air escaped from their interiors. They disappeared a few seconds later beneath the gray-green waters. [MSNBC.com]

Quite the dramatic ending for cars that were in service as little as two weeks ago! In order to comply with federal regulations, environmentally hazardous materials (including PBCs and lubricants) were removed from the cars by the MTA at a cost of $8,000 per car. Maryland is planning to create four additional reefs. Over the last seven years, states like Delaware and New Jersey have created similar reefs from an earlier batch of 2,000 cars released by the MTA. Jeff Tinsman, Delaware’s reef program coordinator says that their 600-car reef has increased the local fish population by 400 times.

Check out the full article from MSNBC.com. You can also at overfishing.org, and learn what you can do to help protect biodiversity in our oceans.

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