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On May 16th, 44 subway cars that operated through New York City for the past forty years were dumped into the Atlantic Ocean, 21 miles (34 kilometers) off the coast of Maryland’s Ocean City. This artificial reef project aims to enhance the local sport-fishing business through increasing the fish population and cut down the disposal cost of the subway cars. Indeed, the practice of an artificial reef project was not for the first time; there are at least 1200 subway cars that have been drifted to the bottom of the sea near the state of New Jersey and Delaware.

“A 600-car reef in that state’s waters had increased the local fish population by 400 times, and boosted the number of angling trips to 13,000 a year from 300 before the reef was created,” said Jeff Tinsman, Delaware’s reef program coordinator. Accordingly, the reef protects fish from their predators and mussels and shrimps quickly colonize the structure. Then the increase in fish population attracts the recreational fishermen, which benefits local businesses.

Additionally, New York City saved approximately 11 million dollars to 13 million dollars in disposal cost through releasing the subway cars to the bottom of the ocean. Any environmental hazardous material regulated by the environmental policy of the federal government was removed from all the subway cars before transporting them to the ocean, but there is still uncertainty with the environmental effect concerned with sinking this many number of subway cars to the sea.

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