Artificial Reefers

Reports recently surfaced, if you will, of a gigantic Texas-sized Island Of Garbage that is floating out in the Pacific Ocean. Once again, nature is trying to tell us to stop using oceans as trashcans, and once again, we shrug and blithely shuffle along.

And at first, hearing that old New York City subway cars - the underground vehicle where Broadway stars hang off the strap next to the indigent, where people ride on the way to and from work, where rubes lose their money on games of Three Card Monte, where the City That Never Sleeps sleeps in the subway - are being dumped into the ocean seems like a gross abuse of the ecosystem, and an affront to fish and swimmer alike.

But no! It's all good, all good for the cause and the fish as well. They become fish and coral habitats, and a great way to re-use the old subway cars.

Jeff Tinsman, of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources, calls the repurposed subway cars “luxury condominiums for fish."

What happens is, states along the coast that wish to provide cod condos and abalone apartments and halibut hideaways (I have more, but enough of this!) procure the old subway cars and clean them up, removing the greasy old undercarriages (we should all do this too!) and the doors and windows. They even steam clean the interior, which probably does not remove all the painted graffiti, but the fish don't mind. Or if they do, they don't complain.

The 20,000 pound steel boxes are then put on barges and taken to the right offshore location, where they are unceremoniously pushed overboard, settling in Davy Jones's locker on the sea floor.

The end result is an improvement for the coral ecosystem and a place for fish to swim in and out of all day, and it is helping to reverse the damage that our world has done to theirs.

Now, let's do something about all these beer cans and plastic straws...