In 1972, a group of Florida fishermen had what seemed like a clever idea: dump old tires into the ocean and let a new reef grow around them. More than 50 years later, most of those tires are still down there, and they’ve done more harm than good.
The project was organized by Broward Artificial Reef Inc., a nonprofit group of fishermen and boaters, according to a Broward County government media kit on the cleanup effort. The plan was to bundle old tires together with steel clips and nylon rope, then sink them off Fort Lauderdale to create habitat for fish and coral, all while giving old tires a second life instead of piling up in landfills.
Roughly 2 million tires went into the water, spread across about 34 acres of ocean floor a little over a mile offshore, in waters 60 to 70 feet deep…