At this very moment, there’re over 5 trillion pieces of plastic waste floating in our oceans. That’s roughly 650 pieces of plastic for every person on Earth. So you might be outraged to know that from 2001 to 2010, over 2,000 New York train cars were dumped right into the sea. But, believe it or not, these trains weren’t meant to hurt the environment, they were meant to help it! And what followed, nobody could’ve expected. Let's discover exactly why over 2,000 subway cars were dumped into the ocean.
Retired MTA Subway Cars & Artificial Reef
In the early 2000s, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or MTA, decommissioned all 1,300 of their Redbird subway cars. These icons of the New York subway system had been riding the rails since the 1950s, but they were finally being phased out for a newer model. So what was to be done with all the retired veterans?
Normally, defunct train cars would be sold off for scrap metal. But that wasn’t possible for the Redbird, because each car was made with toxic asbestos. When damaged, asbestos can release toxic fibers into the air, and inhaling them can lead to chronic lung disease and even cancer. In short, it’s not the kind of stuff you want to start cutting into and selling to the public.
Cleaning all traces of asbestos from the Redbirds would be a slow and very expensive process though, and one that’d still end with every car being thrown into a landfill. So, in 1999, the Director of the MTA, Michael Zacchea, proposed a bold solution to their problem.Instead of cleaning the cars, he suggested they simply dump them into the ocean, saving the MTA a whopping $34 million in clean-up and disposal costs. But despite how it sounds, Michael’s idea wasn’t just flagrant pollution. His plan was to use the train cars to foster new sea life as an
artificial reef. It sounds crazy, but he just might’ve been onto something!Scattered across the sea floor you’ll find rocky, ridge-like structures that all manner of marine life use for protection or food. These ridges are called reefs, and they play a massive role in the aquatic ecosystem. The very best are called coral reefs, this is where thousands of living organisms called polyps grow together and form clusters, known as corals, on the reefs.
Think of them like the rainforests of the ocean, because despite making up less than 1% of the sea floor, they support nearly 25% of all ocean life. In other words, they’re kind of a big deal. Which is why what’s happening right now is all the more terrifying.Rising ocean temperatures have led to over 50% of global coral reefs dying in the last 30 years. And if trends continue, it’s been predicted that a devastating 90% might die out within the next century. As natural reefs continue to be eroded by climate change, many feel we need to find man-made solutions to replace them. You can probably guess where this is going.
This is what it looks like when coral dies by Insider Artificial reefs give undersea corals and algae something to hold on to, along with being a shelter and breeding ground for fish. But it’s not as easy as dumping trash into the ocean and sprouting a lush ocean kingdom. Around half of all artificial reefs have little or no effect on fostering the growth of healthy sea life.To increase the chances, they’ve got to do a couple of things. For one, they need to be heavy. A good reef has to be able to withstand storms and strong tides; that way, they’re not just rolling around, damaging the already delicate sea floor.
They should also be made to last, there’s no point using something that’ll only hold up for a few months before breaking down. With this in mind, one candidate seemed pretty much perfect for the MTA’s needs: the Redbirds.
But what about all that deadly asbestos? Well, while the MTA judged it too toxic for humans, they said it probably wouldn’t affect sea life. But not everyone was so convinced, some environmental groups pointed to scientific papers that suggested even a tiny amount of asbestos was enough to poison corals and fish. Understandably, the public was put off at this and progress floundered for the next 2 years as MTA officials sweated over every detail of the project. If it all went south and the cars ended up wiping out local sea life, no MTA official would want to be the one facing the angry mob waiting for them.
Despite this, little by little, the plan began to get support from several groups including the US Coast Guard and Environmental Protection Agency. With their help, by 2001 the stage was set to go forward with the grand plan. Though, rather than New York’s waters, which the state didn’t approve, the cars were set to be dumped in parts of the ocean owned by other willing states, like New Jersey and Delaware.First off, they cleaned the carriages of any toxic grease and stripped the degradable plastics and other loose materials that might pollute the ocean. Then, they removed the doors and windows so nothing would obstruct access to them. After that, the cars were lifted onto barges and carried out to sea.
But once they were out on the ocean, it wasn’t as easy as just picking a random spot and throwing them overboard. A lot of New Jersey’s ocean floor is made up of soft, muddy sand. If you were to drop something heavy on top of it, like a train car, it could get swallowed up like quicksand!
To prevent this, they used a system called “exclusionary mapping”. Essentially, this was just a way of helping them avoid bad reef spots by considering things like the depth of the water, number of fish in the area, and the distance from other reefs and shipwrecks. After all, the last place you want to drop your shiny new reef is right on top of a pre-existing one! Well, some careful searching later, and they’d found a few perfect locations. All that was left to do now was let those Redbirds fly.
Redbird Reef
Over the next 10 years, the MTA dropped nearly 900 cars into the Atlantic Ocean from New Jersey to Delaware, where they plummeted some 80 to 130 feet down to the bottom. The remaining 400 cars were dropped in the waters near Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia.
From the barren ocean floor, the train cars almost look like they’ve been transported to another world. But had the gamble paid off? Well, yes. It wasn’t long before all kinds of sea life started to set up shop inside. As well as blue mussels attaching themselves to the walls and floor, the carriages also attracted some 40 different species of invertebrates, including shrimp, crabs and worms. And this new ecosystem was just getting started.
As low currents hit the train cars, it caused something called
upwelling. This is where cold water from the bottom of the ocean smacked against the walls of the cars, lifting up and dispersing a whole bunch of nutrients from the sandy floor that smaller fish love. In just a few short months, the cars dramatically transformed into a buffet for small fish, with a whopping 400 times as much food per square foot in and around them than anywhere else in the area. The plan had worked better than anyone could’ve imagined. And food’s not the only reason sea life came flocking, the carriages also provided shelter and protection from hungry predators. While small fish could easily swim inside through the open doors, big ones found it impossible to follow. Plus, the cars’ smooth frame provided an ideal base for algae and barnacles, which in turn attracted even more marine life looking to prey on them.
A year after the first cars were dropped, bigger fish like black sea bass and Triggerfish had made the carriages their home too, and after them, predators like dolphins began migrating towards the new reef looking for food!
2,500 subway cars are used to create an artificial underwater reef by Yahoo Finance Two years after New Jersey had received their first cars, their Department of Environmental Protection found that an average of 323 fish used each one for food and shelter. That means across the 600 train cars sunk off New Jersey alone, there were a staggering 193,000 fish relying on these new structures. And that’s disregarding the other 700 cars dropped elsewhere! Five years after being sunk, the cars had been fully adopted, with a diverse community of sea life coming and going depending on the season. And remember the coral mentioned earlier? Well, the trains didn’t just offer sanctuary for fish, they also had a sturdy enough exterior for corals to grow on! And grow they did. After more than 20 years in the ocean, the cars were almost unrecognizable from all the new life, and became a spectacle for adventurous divers wanting to check out the magical sight. And though some had been lost to the elements along the way, over 60% were still standing strong.
Subway Cars Nice Site Shot 230 Sec by Charleston Scuba
By all accounts the Redbird experiment had been a total success, proving all the critics wrong. But let's delve into an important, and shocking, part of the story.
Brightlighters Reef
The MTA didn’t just drop the Redbirds; they also used their younger brother, the Brightliners. Debuting in 1964, just 2 years after the Redbird, Brightliners had a stainless-steel exterior but were otherwise very similar. So, when they too were decommissioned, about 1,000 Brightliners were also sent to their watery grave.
NYC subway cars dumped off Ga. coast by Savannahnow Expectations were high for these silver sanctuaries. Not only because of the initial success of the Redbirds, but because experts believed the Brightliners would hold up even better. Their stainless-steel exteriors would hypothetically make them far more resistant to corrosion than the carbon steel of the Redbirds, to the point they could last a respectable 10 years longer. And so, in April 2008, around 1,000 of these chrome-colored carriages were sent down to house the creatures of the deep.Except where the Redbird had succeeded, the Brightliner was an absolute disaster. After just a few short months in the water, the metal had already started to disintegrate! How was this possible? Seemingly, because of 2 major oversights. The first was the cars’ iconic silver design. While they did have a stainless-steel exterior, it was actually just a stainless-steel skin, spot welded to a carbon steel frame. This means the two pieces of metal were only welded together at certain points, leaving a tiny gap between them. So, when the trains went under, saltwater began seeping into this gap, causing the walls to corrode faster before inevitably falling apart.
Another big issue was the seemingly harmless corrugated pattern on the train. Undercurrent waves hitting the carriage got caught on these more than the smooth Redbirds and ended up pulling at the metal and peeling it off. Kind of like a giant metal banana. And so a train that was supposed to last over 25 years was turned to rubble in just a few months. Angry and disappointed, New Jersey cancelled an order they’d made for 500 more. Talk about a letdown.
NYC Subway Cars and Comanche Wreck #1 8Jun19 by Charleston Dive Videos It's not all doom and gloom, though. While the trains broke down much faster than expected, the rubble still offered some shelter to deep sea critters. And Brightliners aside, the train car project was still considered a success. As well as encouraging fishing, many a diver flocked to see them, boosting tourism and generating particular interest in New Jersey’s coast, which had barely received any before. The Garden State’s coast has a very flat sandy bottom. This is because tropical waters are typically the right environment for reefs to naturally form, whereas temperate waters, like New Jersey’s, are far emptier, with fish instead forced to rely on small, rocky outcrops. Not exactly a tantalizing trip for the average scuba diver. Because of this, the state knew they had to spice up their coast with artificial reefs. Believe it or not, projects like these train cars can bring in hundreds of millions of dollars and create thousands of jobs in the diving, fishing, and tourism industries.
For now, they still have their old Redbirds to rely on for this. But although the Redbirds have held together longer than expected, they will eventually fall apart and get buried in the sand. Then what will happen to all those fish and coral that rely on them for food and protection? Well, hopefully there are some carriages that can replace the older ones.
Retired MARTA Railcars In The Atlantic
In 2024, Georgia’s Metropolitan Rapid Transit Authority dropped 2 newly retired train cars into the Atlantic, with plans already underway to retire another 6, Viking Funeral style. But this isn’t anywhere near enough to replace all of the aging cars down there. And it's very unlikely that the MTA will push for using train cars on anywhere near this scale again.
Modern carriages are made of material that can more easily be turned into scrap without the need to attempt a risky reefing project. Combine that with the fact that they contain more plastics and circuitry than older cars, and you’ve got a recipe for some things you really don’t wanna throw in the water. But without a stockpile of the older carriages lying around, what can possibly be done?
Whatever it is, it needs to be done fast. With the last subway cars going down around 2010, that means that, at best, we have about ten years before the remaining Redbird cars completely break down.
Horseshoe Crab Artificial Reef Sculpture
One New Jersey resident had a bold, if unconventional, solution. In 2012, marine biologist and artist Chris Wojcik built a colossal 48-foot-long, 25,000-pound concrete statue in the shape of a horseshoe crab! Costing some $96,000, Chris and 2 friends spent 6 weeks working on this gargantuan sculpture. And all so they could sink it four and a half miles off the Mantoloking coast. This literally monumental effort wasn’t all for the good of the fish though, Chris was trying to get his name in the Guinness Book of World Records.
But why a horse-shoe crab? Simple: Chris loved the creatures! And New Jersey does have one of the densest horseshoe crab populations in the world. While actually constructing the giant reef only took a handful of weeks though, setting an exact sinking date ended up being way tougher. For months, Chris waited for good weather, cancelling once in July because of storms. But by late August, it seemed the crab’s time had finally come. The statue was welded onto a pair of 50-foot deck barges and carried out to sea for a final farewell. But just as it was being lowered into the water, the one thing that nobody wanted to happen, happened.
The support strap holding the statue to the barge had snapped! The huge crab slipped off and plummeted down through the water all the way to the bottom, where
it shattered on impact. Chris was devastated, and to add insult to injury, the empty barge followed suit, falling on top of what was left and crushing the statue even further. All that remains of the impressive craftmanship is a pile of broken rocks and an empty barge. It’s enough to bring a tear to your eye.The rocks do still offer some shelter to sea life at least, just like the Brightliners did. And even despite the breakage, Chris still earned a record for making the largest underwater sculpture in the world. Not too shabby then. Regardless, a single concrete crab would only have done so much. If the New Jersey coast was gonna replace all those ageing train cars, they’d need to think bigger. Much bigger. If only there were some other forms of cylindrical public transportation ripe for the plucking. Well, if we head some 8,700 miles southeast to Sri Lanka, they just might have had the perfect idea.
Buses Submerged In Sri Lankan Waters
In 2020 the Sri Lankan government started on an exciting new artificial reef program, using not train cars but buses! They took around 20 of their decommissioned Ceylon Transport buses and dropped them slap bang in the ocean just off Neduntheevu, a small tropical island 22 miles from the mainland. The goal was to nurture local marine life while also decluttering the country.
But how did it do? Well, early results seem to show the project was a success, more fish were attracted to the area, leading to higher breeding rates and thus better yields for fishermen. So everything was gravy, right? Well, not exactly.
Not everyone is quite so pleased with these new reefs. Some Sri Lankans took to social media, angrily stating that the buses would be better sold off as scrap metal or being repaired and used for schools. Which they might, but considering they’d spent the last couple of years rotting in bus depots, that would’ve taken a lot of time and money. And the majority of these posts fail to even acknowledge the positive impact an artificial reef can have on a country’s wildlife and economy.Even so, it’s not just locals who’ve got problems; the reef opened a whole can of worms with Sri Lanka’s neighboring country, India. Fishers in Tamil Nadu have ironically complained that rather than help their livelihood, the buses will only hurt it. This is due to bottom trawling, the controversial fishing method they use.Bottom trawling is where a large net is attached to a boat and dragged across the ocean floor. On the face of it, this might sound like a very efficient way of catching lots of fish. But in reality, it’s incredibly harmful. Not only does it rip up the ocean floor and damage precious corals, it also ends up catching underdeveloped fish that stay low to the ground for safety.
And if that still doesn’t sound that bad, trawling also has a nasty habit of stirring up and releasing harmful carbon from the seabed into the water. Every year, an astronomical 1.1 billion tons of carbon is stirred up, close to the annual emissions of the entire aviation industry. What’s more, some 60% of that will eventually make its way into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming, while the rest dissipates through the water and plays a part in ocean acidification, not good for sea-life. While bottom trawling has been banned in India, many people continue the harmful practice today, with over half of India’s fish caught using this method.
The critics of Sri Lanka’s artificial reefs support bottom trawling and argue the buses might drift into Indian waters and damage their fishing nets. If anything, I hope they do. Regardless, buses could be one option for New Jersey to explore when replacing those old train cars, if they have any to get rid of.
SS United States To Become World's Largest Artificial Reef
With all these botched projects and controversies, it’s a surprise that any reefs ever actually get made. Does anywhere have a truly successful reef program? Well, yes, and to my shock, the answer is Florida. Famous for more than just alligators and oddballs, the sunshine state is also home to the most artificial reefs in the world.
More than 4,000 of them have been peppered across the Floridian coast since the 1940s, comprised mainly of sunken ships and barges, and they’re about to complete their biggest reef project yet. I’m talking, largest artificial reef in history, big. Enter, the SS United States, a 1,000-foot ocean liner constructed back in the 1950s. That’s bigger than the Titanic!
This beast of a ship was once considered the fastest ocean liner in the world, travelling from New York to England in just 3 days. Despite its speedy reputation though, the United States was retired in 1996 and has sat docked in Philadelphia for almost 30 years.
Soon though it’ll be making its final journey to Okaloosa County, Florida,
to be transformed into the biggest artificial reef in the world. The new wreck is expected to be the barnacle-encrusted crown jewel of Florida’s reef program, despite being located near 500 other artificial reefs. Still, it’s kind of sad seeing a massive piece of history slip below the waves. But just like with the Redbirds, turning something into an undersea reef can actually help it get more attention. Look no further than what’s hiding deep in the Marshall Islands. Submerged in the Kwajalein Atoll, a 130-foot lagoon surrounded by small islands, you’ll find one of the largest collections of World War 2 aircrafts there is.
Diving Kwajalein Atoll- The Mavis Wrecks by Dan Farnham But even though a vast assortment of fish and corals have claimed this place as their own, they weren’t sunk with that purpose. And it wasn’t enemy fighters that brought them down either, it was the US Navy. Let me explain. The United States successfully took Kwajalein Island from Japan in 1944. From there, the US set up their own airfield and started running operations from the island until the end of the war. When it was time to pack up and leave however, they still had all these planes lying around. So, rather than the expensive and time-consuming job of lugging them all home, the Navy decided to go for the easy option, dumping them right into the atoll.
Despite how it sounds, by now you should know this was a great move for the environment, and budding divers. Put on some diving gear, and you’ll find the rotting remains of some of the most iconic Allied planes of the Second World War. Iconic aircraft like the B-25 bomber and the Vought F4U Corsair are now paradises for fish and sprouting with corals. While they weren’t dumped with ocean dwellers in mind, the move has made the area a major tourism hotspot. Even though we're getting sidetracked, the point is, how will any of these options fair as a replacement for New Jersey’s train cars? Well, unless war museums across the country decide to offload a whole bunch of spare B-17s, I think we can safely cross World War 2 vehicles off the list. Then there’s Chris and his horseshoe crabs. Even if he worked day and night to make an entire platoon of awe-inspiring arthropods, it still wouldn’t be enough to make up for the loss of the subway cars. That only leaves us with 2 options: boats and busses. But while these might fare better, inevitably, they’ll suffer the same fate as the Redbirds, decaying beyond use and putting us right back into the same situation. If you ask me, no matter what they end up sinking, New Jersey and places across the globe should pair new artificial reef projects with more comprehensive reef management programs. That means enforcing clear rules against habitat-damaging practices like reef trawling and overfishing, plus taking more dedicated steps to combat climate change. With these steps, we might just be able to start undoing the damage already done to our oceans. Otherwise, we’re gonna have a ton of problems. I hope you were amazed at retired vehicles turned into artificial reefs! Thanks for reading.
