Reef Subway Cars Damaged?

[one4water]

OK, maybe I am unschooled in the art of Reef building but this seems kind of silly to me. They have been dropping retired subway cars and boats and all sorts of stuff down for artificial reefs for who knows how long now and have created some great fishing grounds and fish habitats. Below is part of an article that I copied and pasted. It states they are stopping the deployments of the subway cars becasuse they have sustained structural damage. So what does it matter if they are damaged? it's not like they plan to reuse these things and they are still doing what they were intended to do, right? What's the problem if they are no longer structurally sound? I would imagine they get damaged when they drop them off a barge into the ocean anyway. Seems like a huge waste of money to even be monitoring these heaps for structural integrity, they are basically lumps of steel on the ocean floor that fish live in now. There is no need for them to be structurally sound anymore, they will never carry people again, never run down a track again and are just skeletons for underwater growth to hold on to and fish to swim around in. Can someone shed a little light on this?

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently announced

that the state would postpone future deployments of stainless steel subway cars. During

a scuba dive performed by the DEP’s Division of Fish and Wildlife in November at the

Atlantic City Reef, four of five subway cars surveyed exhibited significant structural damage.

In light of this information, another dive was executed four weeks later at a different

grouping of stainless steel subway cars within the Atlantic City Reef. Of the two stainless

steel subway cars surveyed, both exhibited similar damage. The cause of damage to

the stainless steel subway cars is unknown and further analysis is required.

The stainless steel subway cars were obtained free of cost from New York City Transit

Authority and have been deployed as reef material on both the Atlantic City and Cape

[emudryj]

without knowing these reefs, the only thing I can assume is that they are concerned about people diving THRU the cars and the cars colapsing at that time.... I think that if that happens and a lawyer finds out they knew about this, they could be liable...

[TooReel]

Nah, they could care less about a diver. They are afraid that they might collapse and hurt a rare and elusive red snapper.

without knowing these reefs, the only thing I can assume is that they are concerned about people diving THRU the cars and the cars colapsing at that time.... I think that if that happens and a lawyer finds out they knew about this, they could be liable...

[Capt Rick Hiott]

,,,,,sounds political to me..................

[cracker]

,,,,,sounds political to me..................

I agree.

Capt.

Looks like you need some more sponsors.... I think there is still a little space open in that signature..

[welder]

Everything returns to dirt.

The cars are rotting away.

[one4water]

Everything returns to dirt.

The cars are rotting away.

My point exactly. on the ocean floor, they will deteriorate and break down. That should be what is expected. Divers, at least most divers, already know that ging inside of any underwater structure is dangerous and could collapse. That's just part of the game.

I just hate to see our tax dollars spent babysitting a rotting hunk of steel. Now they will have to pay even more to have future train cars cut up and disposed of in a land fill somwhere where it will do no good to anyone.

Drop it, let it rot and forget about it.

[Whiteowl]

here in NC, some railroad box cars were used as reef material in the Eighties. After about a year, they were pretty much flat. For the cost and effort of deployment, the box cars did not provide the reef building that was expected. This may be something similar to the "damage" that the article describes. No problem except the cars may not be providing the habitat that was expected.

[Nutskie]

Its the nj dep since when have they ever made any sense.

[one4water]

I am sure they could find some scrap metal beams and weld in a few X braces that could keep them from folding up. Before they dump them that is. Maybe not, who knows?