Old New York City Subway Cars Become Artificial Reefs June 12, 2011 by lukesheppard

New York Times transit reporter Michael Gynbaum has created a beautiful series of photo’s showing retired New York City subway cars being dropped into the ocean to create artificial reefs. This course of action was decided on over 10 years ago by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority in an attempt to help the environment and I imagine to some extent save some cash. Since this was decided on all those years back more than 2500 cars have been donated to the cause. When the idea of dropping subway cars in the ocean came about there was a lot of speculation as to whether it would have any environmental impact due to the various glues used in the production of the cars, but after some independent tests where taken it was decided that it caused less harm than anticipated and the results since they started back in 2001 have been fantastic. Small and large fish species have been thriving around the subway cars. To check out the images, see the New York Times website.