A crash, a splash, a scuttled boat and now a new home for fish: That’s what happened this week off the coast of the Florida Panhandle when local officials sank a former oil industry ship to create an artificial reef.
County officials have been sinking ships, and dropping concrete barriers and other structures that will create new homes for fish and other marine life. They’ve scuttled 10 large vessels in the last three years, including, this week, the RMS Cyclops, a 105-foot, rusted ship that was used to transport supplies to offshore oil rigs.
“This is creating the habitat for species to hang out, and forage, and reproduce and live,” said Alex Fogg, the Coastal Resource Manager for Okaloosa County.
Elsewhere, all sorts of structures have been used to create artificial reefs, including decommissioned oil rigs. Fish and other marine life like the nooks and crannies, which protect them from the unchecked current. Over time, an entire ecosystem can grow around the disused industrial materials. There is a robust process to clean the ships of possible pollutants, including plastics, oil residue and any paint that has problematic chemicals or lead.
On its way to the ocean floor on Tuesday, about a mile offshore, the Cyclops did a backflip, its front cabin pitching upward as its rear hull dropped straight down into the sea. With a splash, it sank under the surface of the water, then settled upside down 72 feet underneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
That wasn’t the plan, but scuttling ships sometimes can be unpredictable. Fogg said it would create an interesting environment for fish, fishers and divers.
Fogg said that he expected the first fish to check out the ship relatively quickly. But “we won’t see this function as a full blown ecosystem for at least a year,” he said, as the layers of the ecosystem build up over time.