They Dumped 2 Million Tires Into The Ocean. Fifty Years Later The Results Are Shocking!

Find out why they dumped 2 millions tires into the ocean… and what happened 50 years later!
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– [Narrator] Every year, 18 billion pounds of plastic trash gets dumped into our oceans. That’s enough to cover every foot of coastline around the world with five full trash bags. Pollution has turned our oceans into a ticking time bomb. But back in the 1970s, a little-known development

Off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida tried to save their local reef, by dumping a staggering two million used car tires directly on top of it. Um, what? Despite what you might think, this wasn’t meant to hurt marine life, oh, no, they wanted to help it. And the results might surprise you.

So, stick around to find out just why two million tires ended up in the bottom of the ocean. Okay, so before we jump into the tires, there’s some super important stuff you need to know first, super important and super scary. Prior to 1972, there wasn’t anything stopping companies from uh, “disposing” of anything they wanted to in the oceans. It was open season. In 1968 alone, an estimated 38 million tons

Of unwanted excavated materials, 4.5 million tons of industrial waste, and another 4.5 million tons of sewage, 100 million tons of plastic, between two and four tons of chemical waste, (gasping) and, finally, 1 million tons of heavy metals were released into the ocean. But these are just estimates, honestly, no one really knows

How much harmful junk got sunk because there’s little to no record keeping from the time. If you think all that sounds bad, though, you’ve heard nothing yet. According to the US archive, between 1946 and 1970 over 55,000 containers of radioactive waste were disposed of into the Pacific Ocean.

What’s more, a further 34,000 tons were dumped in three sites off the East Coast between 1951 and 1962. Yuck! Basically, we’ve done a helluva lot of bad, bad, bad stuff to the waters of our planet. Now, whilst this is absolutely horrifying, you have to bear in mind that we’re judging by today’s standards.

We know far more about the effects hazardous substances have on the environment than people did back in the ’50s. Thanks to the hippy movement in the ’60s, though, the American public had a bit of a cultural revolution and became far more eco-conscious. So, by 1972, the government introduced restrictions

On what could be dumped into the ocean, score! Now companies who produced massive amounts of waste had to find other solutions to clean up the mess they made. That’s where we get to the tires. In the ’70s, America’s booming automobile industry produced close to a staggering 170 million car tires a year.

And that made a lot of waste. Whilst some very basic recycling practices existed as far back as the 1960s, most tires were just dumped into landfills or incinerated. But in 1972, Broward Artificial Reef Inc. proposed an audacious two-birds-one-stone solution that would both remove all of the ugly tires piling up on land

And help undo some of the damage done to the ocean. What was that solution? Well, they proposed building an artificial reef from the used tires off the Fort Lauderdale coast. See, natural coral reefs serve as incredible ecosystems for our oceans. Corals are marine invertebrates that provide food and shelter

For all manner of marine life, so their loss would be devastating. Even so, we are losing them. So, by dropping tires into the ocean, they’d theoretically provide extra surface area for new corals to grow on. The more corals that grow, the more fish are enticed into the area. Badabing badaboom, you’ve got yourself

A little self-sustaining ecosystem. Sure, it was a pretty experimental idea, but similar reefs had been built all across Northeastern USA, the Gulf of Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, and Africa. So, why not Florida? Sounds too good to be true right? Ha, just you wait! The project received government approval in 1974,

And that spring more than 100 privately owned boats came forward to help out. Each vessel carried thousands of tires bound together with steel clips and nylon and deposited them across an 88-acre site 7,000 feet offshore. It was so popular that even tire manufacturer Goodyear got involved.

Not only did they provide equipment to smaller boats, they even christened the site by dropping a giant, gold-plated tire from a branded blimp as it flew overhead. Wow, not melodramatic at all then. In total, a mind-blowing two million tires went in to creating Osborne Artificial Reef.

Can you imagine what that must have looked like? Two million tires cascading off ships into the Atlantic Ocean? I’d say something a little like this. Now, however, fifty years have passed, and it’s almost unrecognizable from what it looked like before Are you ready to see it? Uhhh, I think there’s been some kind of mistake. Maybe I’ve rolled the wrong clip. Let’s try another one! (narrator throat clearing) Are you ready to see it? Huh, where’s the reef? All the corals and the fish? Well, there isn’t one. Despite having the best of intentions and promising big results, the Osborne Artificial Reef was a catastrophic failure. Remember earlier I said the tire bundles were bound with steel clips and nylon? Yeah, well no one thought to treat the steel

So it wouldn’t corrode. See, most metals rust due to moisture in the environment. Steel contains iron, and moisture strips electrons away from the iron to make hydrated iron oxide, which is the reddy-browny stuff we call rust. In salt water, this happens a whopping five times faster due to the salty electrolytes conducting electricity

Better than fresh water. Because rusting is caused by the movement of electrons, the faster these electrons are taken, the quicker the metal breaks down, comprende? Nice! Basically, untreated steel in the ocean equals big boo-boo. And I don’t say that lightly. Not long after the tires had been deposited, their steel bindings broke apart,

Causing all 2 million tires to become loose and mobile. Now, Florida is susceptible to some very rough weather. Year after year storms whipped up the seas, creating underwater currents, which smashed the loose tires against the natural reef that already existed. So, anything that was there got utterly destroyed.

Rather than create a new reef, the tires were obliterating the old one! But the damage wasn’t just contained to the local environment, oh, no! In 1995, Hurricane Opal tore through the Gulf Coast and spread over 1,000 tires across the Florida Panhandle. And then again, in 1998, Hurricane Bonnie dumped thousands of tires

Along North Carolina beaches. It was an absolute mess. But that’s not all. You ever heard the saying, “A rolling stone gathers no moss?” Well, moving tires don’t grow corals. Not only did the tires destroy the existing reef, but they also failed to grow anything new. Corals require clean, healthy, warm water

With a strong wildlife population to grow properly. That’s not going to happen on a tire getting yeeted 900 miles to North Carolina, is it? But let’s not get completely carried away, the good news is that it might not all be doom and gloom for Osborne Reef. Before we get into that, though,

If you’re enjoying this video show some love to those like and subscribe buttons. It helps support the channel and keeps you up to date with all my amazing videos. Great, now, let’s get back to it. Hmm, where were we? Right, in 2001, professors at Nova Southeastern University were awarded a $30,000 grant

To begin a reef clean-up operation. With that money, they managed to organize divers to swim down and collect 1,600 of the loose tires. Sure, it’s not a lot relatively speaking, but at least it’s something. In the 30 years preceding the operation, everyone had kinda just pretended it wasn’t there.

So, after hiring a boat, crew, and divers, and getting proper authorization, the removal cost came to around $17 for each of the 1,600 tires. That’s pretty damn costly. Indeed, estimates to clean up the whole reef placed it somewhere between a whopping $40 million and $100 million, yowch! Understandably then, progress stalled.

But then in 2007, the reef clean-up was kickstarted again when the military decided to use the surrounding area as a real-world training facility. That year alone they managed to bring roughly 10,000 tires ashore during military drills. This was further helped by the Florida government who allocated $2 million

To help cover the transport and disposing costs once the tires were brought to shore. By 2009, thanks to hundreds of thousands more dollars being thrown at the problem, a total of 72,000 tires had been pulled, nice! But military operations in the area ceased, and over 95% of the tires still lay untouched, oof.

I said it wasn’t all doom and gloom though, didn’t I? Well, between 2016 and 2019, thanks to a further $4.3 million contract with the Industrial Divers Corporation, serious progress finally started to be made on the site. At their peak, the IDC were removing 2,000 to 5,000 tires a week, and thanks to this

They accumulated a bewildering 250,000 in total. Despite all their success, though, around 2/3 of the tires were still on the seafloor. And as you can see, this continued to cost the Floridian government heaps and heaps of money. That was, until a much cheaper solution came along.

By 2021, a new contender waded into the fray when private company 4Ocean announced their plans to retrieve tires in a 34-acre area north of the original drop site. An operation they’d fund in part through selling $29 bracelets made from the recycled tires. According to 4Ocean’s website, for every bracelet they sell,

Five pounds of ocean waste is removed, neato! And they’ve made some serious progress. Estimations they made in 2022 suggest there are only around 500,000 tires, or just 25% left to take out. Whoa, that’s remarkable! But this is also where this story takes quite an interesting turn.

Remember earlier I said that the initial clean-up organized by Nova Southeastern University cost around $17 per tire? Okay, so I’ve run some calculations here, and these are by no means 100% accurate. But on average, a car tire weighs around 25 pounds. One $29 bracelet per five pounds

Hikes the cost of removal per tire to a staggering $145. That’s an eyewatering 8 1/2 times more than the initial clean-up operation. Holy smokes! Now, before you all start losing your minds, there’s a few things to clear up. That initial clean-up was 20 years ago,

And the cost of everything has gone up across the board. Secondly, 4Ocean aren’t a charity, they’re very clearly a for-profit company. And they’ll have boring business expenses to cover that the university professors simply wouldn’t. But 8 1/2 times? Sure, they’re making way more progress than anyone else ever has,

But to me, it looks like they’re walking away with an insane amount of money whilst doing so. Now, that’s where I need your help. Can we judge companies that are having a positive environmental impact because they’re making money? Or am I just moving the goalposts from the real problem?

Why weren’t those responsible for creating this mess held accountable for clearing it up? Remember Goodyear? The tire manufacturer was eager to hand out free equipment to help dump all the tires in the first place. And who could forget them dropping a giant gold tire in for good measure? Yet, now they’ve conveniently forgotten

About the whole sordid affair. You ask me, they were very happy to get all of their Goodyear branded tires out of the landfills and deep under the ocean. Landfills aren’t just dangerous eyesores, they’re bad PR. But the Osborne Reef isn’t a giant island floating in the ocean everyone can see.

It’s not stopping anyone from swimming. All of the damage is hidden beneath the surface, it’s out of sight, and out of mind. However, none of that is what scares me. Hear me out. There’s a chance, a big chance, that the mess makers wise up to the big dollars on the line

For fixing the problems they’ve made. If they’re not already, they’ll figure out how to make money cleaning up their own waste. At which point, we’re living in a system which promotes polluting because the value in fixing it is so high. I’m not saying that’s what 4Ocean are doing,

I genuinely think they mean well. But I’m also not saying that it couldn’t happen, and that’s terrifying. Boy, this is tough. If you’ve got anything you can add to help me make sense of this, then let me know in the comments. Sadly, Osborne Reef wasn’t the only failed tire reef project.

The very same thing happened in France in the 1980s. Authorities at the French Riviera sank 25,000 tires roughly 1,600 feet from the shore between Cannes and Antibes. Again, they believed the tires would be inert and presented no potential harm to the natural habitat. Fast forward to 2005, and researchers discovered

The tires had been leaking chemicals and heavy metals into the water the whole time. Whilst these minerals are essential for the ecosystem’s function, excess amounts can stunt wildlife development, or worse, kill it off completely. Thanks to quick and decisive action, though, the majority of the tires were removed in a clean-up operation

Fronted by the French state along with tire manufacturer Michelin. All in all, it cost a little over $1.1 million, or about $44 per tire, dramatically cheaper than 4Ocean’s endeavour. Nowadays, researchers from the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental advocacy group, say there’s little evidence that artificial reefs actually do any good,

Even the ones that do take off. The list of potential problems is monstrously long, from toxicity in paint, to plastic parts, to the damage done to ecosystems. But the most damning of all? They don’t really produce new fish! Which, if you remember was kinda the whole point.

In fact, artificial reefs don’t encourage new growth at all. They aggregate fish from other nearby, often natural reefs, and concentrate them into a single area. Fishermen then clock that fish are all gathering in this one place and overfish the populations. It’s a really vicious cycle. But all the pushback and discouragement from experts

Still doesn’t stop new artificial reefs being built, with varying degrees of success. Off the coast of Key Biscayne, Florida, an artificial structure called Neptune Memorial Reef was opened in 2007 with the intention of storing some rather unusual cargo. Wanna have a guess at what it is?

It’s not tires, it’s the souls of the damned! (throat clearing) Ummm, what? Okay, not quite, hopefully, no one’s damned. But the reef offers a service, where after someone’s passing, they take their cremated remains and mix them with PH-neutral cement, which doesn’t affect the water parameters like regular cement would.

From this, they form a concrete memorial. These can weigh from 550 pounds up to a hefty 4,000 pounds, sheesh! Ain’t no way that’s floating off. In fact, each memorial is designed to withstand the strongest storm in the last 100 years. But that’s not the only consideration they’ve taken, the surface of each structure

Is made to be especially rough, so corals have plenty of surface area to attach to, neat! Once each commemoration ornament is completed, it gets lowered into the huge 600,000-square-foot site, where each memorial is laid out meticulously. No joke, this place is set out like a giant underwater city

With roads, a large central feature, and even underwater benches and statues. Awesome! Neptune Memorial Reef is the brainchild of marine biologist Gary Levine and artist Kim Brandell, who envisioned a place where eventually, over 125,000 remains could be interred As of 2022, however, it’d only managed to accrue 1,500 people,

One of which is famed celebrity chef Julia Childs. But while uptake has been slow, the reef itself seems to be growing. More than 140 marine species now call this place their home. And the caretakers have had it placed in a special management zone, so boaters are welcome, as are scuba divers and visitors

Paying respects to their loved ones. However, fishing boats and lobster divers are strictly banned from interfering with the ecosystem. Now, if you’re thinking about this for a loved one, or maybe yourself, I’d hold on until you hear the price. The very cheapest, most basic memorial

Is going to set you back a handsome $13,000, but that can very easily jump up to $85,000 depending on the intricacies of the design. And as far as I’m aware, that doesn’t cover the cost of cremation, which on average is between $3,500 and $7,800 Yikes!

Okay, so the price is a little steep for most people, but it doesn’t really sound like there are any negatives to this, right? They’ve fixed the errors made by nearby Osborne Reef and adapted. Well, if you’ll give me a second to don my “grumpy YouTuber hot take” hat again.

Sure, the reef itself is successful, but it’s not without criticisms. Firstly, cremation in general is pretty unsustainable. Each person who gets cremated releases almost 900 pounds of polluting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is a leading cause of climate change and warms the planet. However, it’s probably unfair

To pin all of the environmental consequences of cremation on this reef. After all, people would still get cremated if it wasn’t there. But what does matter is the concrete the ashes are mixed with. Concrete production is responsible for 8% of all global carbon dioxide emissions and has severely detrimental effects on the environment.

As more CO2 dissolves in our oceans, the PH level, which determines how acidic or alkaline the water is, decreases, becoming more acidic. But corals require alkaline water to grow. So, even though the reef uses a special concrete which doesn’t leech harmful materials into the water, the process to produce the concrete does.

And that leads onto my final, miserable point. That isn’t this a bit of a gimmick? The whole “living coffins” idea isn’t new. In recent years, we’ve seen all kinds of eco-burial methods, from coffins made from mushroom fibers to seed urns, which turn into trees. But I think it’s fair to say

That these all tinker at the edges of environmentalism instead of engaging in more fundamental changes. It’s a bit, “Oh, I won’t be here, but turn me into a salad.” And being priced far higher than standard burial options, it seems a bit elitist to me, that only the rich and fancy

Can afford the ginormous price tag to turn themselves into a hunk of concrete. So, yes, Neptune Reef is doing its job. But whether there is actually any significant environmental impact, hmm, I’m a bit on the fence. The same goes for an even stranger-looking artificial reef, the USS Oriskany.

Sure, some sea -faring vessels sink, but the Oriskany didn’t sink in a battle, or even some freak accident, it was sunk on purpose. Yup, after being commissioned in the 1950s and serving in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the boat was decommissioned in 1976, and laid up in storage for years.

It was towed about to various locations until eventually in 2004, the Navy announced the ship had been sold off to, you guessed it, Florida, to become an artificial reef. So, instead of scrapping it and finding another use for its parts, which sounds like the smart thing to do,

In 2006, Florida went, well, full Florida. By sailing it 24 miles south of Pensacola and blowing it up with 500 pounds of C4 explosives. (sighing) Honestly, you can’t make this up. Believe it or not, though, the sunken USS Oriskany has actually been a massive success! The 900-foot-long wreck

Quickly drew all kinds of aquatic life and has even become a huge attraction for scuba divers. But now it’s time for me to be a big ol’ party pooper again. Eh, okay, so the Oriskany did go through a large amount of environmental remediation, which is a fancy way of saying

They took away the bad stuff before they sank it. But despite those efforts, there were still hundreds of pounds of cancer-causing chemicals called polychlorinated biphenyls in the insulation and wiring. These products were popular around the time of the Oriskany being built, however were banned in 1978 for being extremely harmful.

And they’re onboard the boat! We’re not sure yet if this has caused any real harm, but it seems like a pretty massive oversight. Sure, the reef itself is doing just fine, but it might take longer for the potential side effects to rear their nasty heads.

But they’d never get a chance to rear their nasty heads if the ship had just been scrapped. There are arguments for and against this too, but hear me out. The Oriskany has huge sentimental value stemming from its military service. Had it been scrapped, then a piece of history would’ve been destroyed.

By sinking it, it can still be appreciated and visited, only by highly trained scuba divers, sure, but it’s still something. So, sinking the vessel may well have been catering to nostalgia more than any serious environmentalist thought. I think what I’m trying to get at is that the Oriskany,

Just like any of these other reefs, seems to try and solve a problem by contributing to a much bigger one. Got a load of spare tires? Dump them in the water! Got a load of waste concrete? Dump it in the water! Got a giant naval aircraft carrier? Hmmm, let me think,

Oh I know, I’ll dump it in the water. With Osborne, Neptune, and the USS Oriskany, there’s a familiar pattern. There’s an abundance of something that’s costly to get rid of, so companies pursue questionable legal routes to just dump it and forget about it. If, and it’s a big if, the reef takes off,

Everyone’s patting themselves on the back and counting all the money they saved. But if it fails like it did with Osborne, they’ve already washed their hands of it. Look, we’re getting towards the end of the video, but I’d really love to hear your thoughts on this one down in the comments.

It’s definitely tricky. And also, let me know if you’ve been to any of these reefs and how they’re doing, I’m a little internet gremlin, remember? Can you change my mind about how dumb this all seems? I’m open to all your opinions. But with that, it’s time to let this all sink in,

Okay, I really couldn’t help myself. C’mon, this has been gloomy enough. Let me get just one bad pun in for old times’ sake. Until next time, thanks for watching.