Osborne Reef is an
artificial reef
An artificial reef is a human-created underwater structure, typically built to promote marine life in areas with a generally featureless bottom, to control erosion, block ship passage, block the use of trawling nets, or improve surfing.
Many re ...
off the coast of
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Fort Lauderdale () is a coastal city located in the U.S. state of Florida, north of Miami along the Atlantic Ocean. It is the county seat of and largest city in Broward County with a population of 182,760 at the 2020 census, making it the tenth ...
. Originally constructed of
concrete jacks, it was the subject of an ambitious expansion project utilizing old and discarded
tire
A tire (American English) or tyre (British English) is a ring-shaped component that surrounds a Rim (wheel), wheel's rim to transfer a vehicle's load from the axle through the wheel to the ground and to provide Traction (engineering), t ...
s. The expansion ultimately failed, and the reef has come to be considered an
environmental disaster—ultimately doing more harm than good in the
coastal Florida waters.
In 2007, after several false starts, cleanup efforts began when the
United States military
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...
took on the project. This cleanup exercise provided the military with a real-world training environment for their diving and recovery personnel, coupled with the benefit of helping the Florida coast without incurring significant costs to the state. In 2015, a civilian corporation took over, and had finally removed one third of the tires by November 2019.
Construction
The reef was originally constructed of
concrete jacks in a diameter circle.
Expansion
![USS Thrush (1962)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/USS_Thrush_%281962%29.jpg)
In 1972, Broward Artificial Reef Inc. (BARINC) proposed the construction of an enlarged artificial reef to
Broward County as a way to both dispose of old tires as well as lure more
game fish to the area. Similarly designed reefs had already been constructed in the
Northeastern United States
The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast, is a geographic region of the United States. It is located on the Atlantic coast of North America, with Canada to its north, the Southe ...
, the neighboring
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...
,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
,
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
, and
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
.
Gregory McIntosh, a BARINC employee, lauded the project to the attendees of a 1974 conference on artificial reefs: "Tires, which were an esthetic pollutant ashore, could be recycled, so to speak, to build a fishing reef at sea."
With endorsement of the project by the
US Army Corps of Engineers
, colors =
, anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day)
, battles =
, battles_label = Wars
, website =
, commander1 = ...
,
the Broward County government approved the project in 1974. That spring, more than 100 privately owned boats enthusiastically volunteered to assist with the project; accompanied by the
US Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...
's , thousands of tire bundles were simultaneously dropped onto the reef. The
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is an American multinational tire manufacturing company founded in 1898 by Frank Seiberling and based in Akron, Ohio. Goodyear manufactures tires for automobiles, commercial trucks, light trucks, motorcycles, S ...
provided equipment for the auspicious undertaking, even supporting the project so far as to drop a gold-painted tire from a
Goodyear Blimp to christen the site.
The culmination of the project was the deposit of over two million tires bound with steel clips over of the ocean floor, approximately offshore, and at a depth of .
Failure
Ultimately, little marine life has been successful in latching onto the man-made reef and the majority never even had the opportunity to do so. When deposited, while a few tires were individual loose entities, the majority were bound together with
nylon
Nylon is a generic designation for a family of synthetic polymers composed of polyamides ( repeating units linked by amide links).The polyamides may be aliphatic or semi-aromatic.
Nylon is a silk-like thermoplastic, generally made from petro ...
or
steel
Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...
clips (or bands). As there were no exceptional efforts made to ensure the non-
corrosivity
Corrosion is a natural process that converts a refined metal into a more chemically stable oxide. It is the gradual deterioration of materials (usually a metal) by chemical or electrochemical reaction with their environment. Corrosion engin ...
of the steel restraints, they summarily failed
—resulting in the loosing of over two million individual, lightweight tires. This newfound mobility destroyed any marine life that had thus far grown on the tires, and effectively prevented the growth of any new organisms. Furthermore, the tires were now easily subject to the tropical winds and storms that frequent the east coast of Florida, and continue to collide (at times with tremendous force) with natural coral reefs only away: compounding their futility with environmentally damaging side-effects.
Lastly, the concern of adjacent coastal areas is that the tires are not remaining within the boundaries of Osborne Reef.
This project is not the only one of its nature to fail; Indonesia and Malaysia mounted enormous tire-reef programs in the 1980s and are now seeing the ramifications of the failure of tire reefs, from littered beaches to reef destruction.
In 1995,
Hurricane Opal managed to spread over 1,000 tires onto the
Florida Panhandle
The Florida Panhandle (also West Florida and Northwest Florida) is the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Florida; it is a Salient (geography), salient roughly long and wide, lying between Alabama on the north and the west, Georgia (U. ...
, west of
Pensacola; and in 1998,
Hurricane Bonnie deposited thousands of the tires onto
North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...
beaches. Jack Sobel,
Ocean Conservancy
Ocean Conservancy (founded as The Delta Corporation) is a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States. The organization formulates ocean policy at the federal and state government levels based on peer review ...
's director of strategic conservation said in a 2002 interview that "I don't know of any cases where there's been a success with tire reefs." That year, The Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup removed 11,956 tires from beaches all over the world.
Cleanup
In 2001, Dr. Robin Sherman of
Nova Southeastern University
Nova Southeastern University (NSU or, informally, Nova) is a private nonprofit research university with its main campus in Davie, Florida. The university consists of 14 total colleges, centers, and schools offering over 150 programs of study. ...
was awarded a grant of by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...
(NOAA) to begin a tire removal program. She was able to coordinate the removal of only 1,600 tires from the reef, and at a estimated cost per tire of .
In 2002, Florida and Broward County environmental officials began the long and arduous process of setting into motion a plan to remove the tires. An original estimate of between $40 and $100 million (equivalent to about $M and $M in ) led the
Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to plan to arrange a deal with those companies whose construction damages the
seabed
The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean. All floors of the ocean are known as 'seabeds'.
The structure of the seabed of the global ocean is governed by plate tectonics. Most of ...
and reefs. Where they would previously mitigate their destructive construction with replacement constructs for reefs, the state would require them to make their amends by removing tires from the Osborne Reef. This plan faced criticism by environmental groups who felt that this would only hasten the destruction of more marine habitats.
US military involvement
In 2007, Broward County contacted the
United States Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs about their
Innovative Readiness Training (IRT) program, which looks for civil-military projects that improve military readiness and address the needs of the American public.
CWO Donovan Motley said that the cleanup of Osborne Reef easily met those requirements: "This project allows these military divers and Army
LCU crew members' real-world training in 'wartime' salvage ops. And perhaps, more importantly, it exercises interoperability with federal, state and county agencies and these skill sets could have the most significance in the aftermath of a Katrina-type natural disaster."
Beginning in June 2007, the
United States military
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...
and
Coast Guard began “DiveExEast 07" to ascertain the best and most efficient processes for the cleanup effort. Barring unforeseen operational commitments and engagements, military divers hope to use this project as a training platform for several years and "recover the maximum number of tires possible from day one."
Coastal America, an office of the United States federal government was tasked with coordinating the cleanup of the reef; they were instrumental in finalizing the deal wherein the Florida government would allocate (equivalent to about $M in ) to cover transport and recycling of the tires. Ken Banks with the Florida DEP estimated the project to take three to five years, and while that timeline won't allow for the removal of all two million tires, it should mitigate the majority of the damage they're causing to the corals and coastline, though Banks predicted it could take decades for the reefs to rebuild.
Summer 2007 saw US
Navy
A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...
,
Army
An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...
, and Coast Guard divers based out of a Coast Guard base in
Dania Beach, Florida
Dania Beach (Dania until 1998) is a city in Broward County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 31,723. It is part of the South Florida metropolitan area, which was home to 5,564,635 people at the 2010 census ...
working to clean the reef. The joint team first worked to remove the tires from where they were doing the most damage, abutting against natural reefs in the area.
In 2007, the recovery effort brought approximately 10,000 tires ashore.
![86 Engineer Dive Team (2009)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/86_Engineer_Dive_Team_%282009%29.jpg)
In 2008, recovery stopped after 26 days on May 24 after retrieving 43,900 tires. That year, Florida spent approximately on the cleanup, some of which constituted transport for the tires to a shredding facility in neighboring
Georgia whereafter they were burnt as fuel at a
paper mill
A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags, and other ingredients. Prior to the invention and adoption of the Fourdrinier machine and other types of paper machine that use an endless belt, ...
.
Key members of the 2008 cleanup effort were US Army
Captain
Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...
Russell Destremps and his
86th Engineer Dive Team; on August 10, 2009, they were presented with the 2008
Coastal America Partnership Award and a letter from
US President
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United Stat ...
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
for their participation in the reef cleanup effort. The award recognizes "outstanding partnerships that make a significant contribution toward the restoration and protection of our Nation's coastal and marine environment" and is the only environmental award of its kind given by the
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...
.
Two days later in
Hollywood, California
Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios, such as Columbia Pictures, ...
, Coastal America and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs David L. McGinnis awarded the partner cleanup team from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection the same award.
In 2009, recovery began on July 24 with thirty Army and Navy divers at
Hugh Taylor Birch State Park
Hugh Taylor Birch State Park is a Florida State Park located in Fort Lauderdale, on East Sunrise Boulevard ( SR 838), between the Intracoastal Waterway and SR A1A.
History
Birch State park's roots began in 1893 when Chicago attorney Hugh Taylor ...
, where it was thought about 300,000 tires were caught against a natural reef. Loading the caught tires onto the Army craft ''Brandy Station'', the first day's haul brought approximately 1,400 tires ashore.
Wrapping up for the year in mid-August, Coastal America's William Nuckols told the
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
that cleanup efforts have thus far recovered approximately 73,000 tires from the reef.
By the time other operations required the military to end their cleanup at Osborne Reef, 72,000 tires had been collected by soldiers, sailors, and coasties.
2015 onward
In 2015, the state contracted with Industrial Divers Corporation (IDC) to remove the tires. From 2016–2019, the
Florida Legislature
The Florida Legislature is the legislature of the U.S. State of Florida. It is organized as a bicameral body composed of an upper chamber, the Senate, and a lower chamber, the House of Representatives. Article III, Section 1 of the Florida Cons ...
allocated to the project. , IDC was removing 2000–5000 tires per week, had accumulated a total of 250 thousand so far, and still had two thirds of the tires to go.
By 2021,
4Ocean
4Ocean is a for-profit company founded in Boca Raton, Florida, in 2017. 4Ocean retails bracelets made from recycled materials, as well as apparel and other merchandise for which the materials are environmentally- and socially responsibly sourced ...
announced their plan to retrieve Osborne Reef tires in a area north of the original drop site. The clean up would be partially funded by the sale of bracelets made out of reef tires.
See also
*
*
References
{{good article
1970s establishments in Florida
artificial reefs
environment of Florida
environmental disasters in the United States
geography of Fort Lauderdale, Florida
reefs of Florida