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Yeah, I feel like there’d be a lot of salvageable material that could be put to better use. Even if it’s all rusted and broken down, a ship that size has a lot of steel that could be repurposed.
On the one hand yes. But, and this is a big but, typically when ships are sunk by the government, a lot of environmental impact studies and decontamination processes are preformed. The goal is usually to create artificial reefs, which is pretty useful because of how much damage we’ve done to the natural habitats.
Does it balance out, or make up for it? I don’t know, I’m not smart enough. But I do know the artificial reef projects are greatly appreciated and highly desired by local governments.
Also, shipbreaking is really dirty, dangerous, and expensive, typically being outsourced to some 3rd world country.
They spend a lot to decommission the ships and make them safe. It’s just cheaper to buy an old ship and clean it up than to buy a similar amount of other artificial reef materials.
Also, being ships in shallow water, it drives scuba diving tourists as well as creating new locations for recreational fishing.
They’re pretty big boons for the local towns.
Yeah, but it’s not “profitable”.
I dunno, artificial reefs seem like decent way to reuse them. If the metal was worth salvaging seems like the would have. Maybe too labor intensive? https://ocean.si.edu/ecosystems/coral-reefs/when-wrecks-become-reefs
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They’re usually sank in areas that are otherwise uninhabited by corals due to the depth of the water. The wrecks provide surfaces in the light zone which allows corals to grow.
It’s entirely new habitat and it provides more breeding sites in the area. Even if it takes wildlife from other areas, the decrease in population in those results in higher breeding rates in those locations due to decreased competition for food and breeding sites. More breeding sites = more breeding and a higher overall population of wildlife over time.
Ecology aside, these sites draw a lot of tourism. They’re “shipwrecks” that are in shallow water, often shallow enough that you can experience them while scuba diving, without needing decompression stops. This means that scuba divers can experience wreck diving without the extra complexity of decompression.
There are many of these artificial reefs around Florida and they’re very popular dive sites in areas that otherwise would have no similar attractions.
Source: Dated a woman who worked at fish and wildlife, department of marine fisheries and attended the sinking of the Oriskany ( https://www.padi.com/dive-site/united-states-of-america-usa/uss-oriskany/#overview )
It’s being sunk to create artificial reef
Anything you dump down there becomes the environment for whatever’s down there.
That’s what an environment is.
I’ve always kinda wondered what happens once the salt water breaks down the metal and paint, can’t be great for the local ecology
If you think the paint contamination after decommissioning is bad, just wait 'til you find out about how antifouling bottom paint (whether hard copper-based or ablative) works during the service life of the ship, by design.
Damn:
Following the financial collapse of United States Lines, United States was withdrawn from service in a surprise announcement in 1969.
So it was only in service from 1952-1969, then stripped for parts in 1994.
Wasn’t someone trying to buy it for another purpose?
How did they get outbid by a watery grave?
My understanding is there was a decades long conga line of rich idiots in golf shorts thinking they were going to turn the ship into a mall or hotel or whatever, sometimes pouring enough cash to pay the dock rent for a little while longer, and even that has come to an end.
And it’s not prewar steel, so it’s not a big pile of medical-grade scrap.
Shame.
Does it count if it’s above the water?
I’m aware of the whole slavaging shipwrecks because steel made before WWII doesn’t have nuclear fallout in it" thing but, for example the USS North Carolina, BB-55, currently a museum ship sitting in the mud next to the Cape Fear river in Wilmington, she was built in the early days of the war, before America entered the war, is she “pre-war steel?” She’s been in the atmosphere with every detonated nuke and melted down power plant.
Atmosphere doesn’t make cold steel radioactive. The problem is production - impurities are removed through oxidation, i.e., blowing a whole lot of air through molten iron. We take the result from from wrecked ships because nobody’s using them for anything else.
… huh. Wikipedia says it doesn’t even matter nowadays. Background radiation levels are tolerable for instrumentation.
This is your friend, Mike Brady from Oceanliner Designs…
