Artificial Reef Mishap

Ship Sinks Before It Can Be Scuttled Off Florida Keys

(CBS)  A retired Navy ship set to be scuttled with explosives to create an artificial reef sank unexpectedly ahead of schedule Friday, forcing workers to abandon ship and landing at an odd angle still sticking out of the water.

The 46-year-old Spiegel Grove started going down Friday morning as workers were making last-minute preparations for sending it to its underwater grave later in the day, officials said. A tugboat carried them to safety.

"For a while, there was some tears and concern about where our divers were," said Pam Baker, an employee of Ocean Divers in Key Largo, which had sent volunteers out to work on the project. A head count confirmed everyone was all right.

The crews had been pumping the ship with water for a few days to make it sit low in the water to make the sinking easier. The site is six miles off the Florida Keys in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

By 10:30 a.m., the ship had sunk and "turned turtle," ending up upside down on the sea bottom, said George Garrett, director of marine resources for Monroe County.

But the 510-foot ship's superstructure was also on the bottom, causing the bow to angle up out of the water, which is about 160 feet deep. It wasn't immediately known what went wrong, said Andy Newman, spokesman for the $1 million project.

"Right now they (project engineers) are regrouping to decide what to do," he said. One idea was for tugboats to attach cables and try to roll the ship so it would sink on its side.

"Getting it on its side will at least help save the project as a dive," he said.

Added Coast Guard spokeswoman Petty Officer Anastasia Burns: "We don't know what we're going to do next."

Marine biologists have said the ship is the largest ever intentionally sunk to create an artificial reef. Within six months, sunken vessels are usually coated with barnacles, sea urchins and soft algae that draws nibbling fish, which in turn draw larger ocean predators. Over a decade or so, they build up coral polyps that form the region's colorful coral reefs.

Snorkeling and scuba diving on sunken ships is big business for the tourism-dependent Keys. Some 3.1 million people visit the islands annually and 60 percent of them swim, snorkel, dive, fish or participate in some water sport, said Dave Score, manager for the part of the sanctuary where the ship lies.

"Pretty much everybody in the keys, their livelihood is intricately linked to the marine environment here," he said.

"We have groups booked from Europe coming next weekend, and well into the Christmas season," said Spencer Slate, owner of the Atlantis Dive Center.

The premature sinking was a disappointment for Key Largo residents. Dive shop owners, the local Chamber of Commerce and the tourism development agency for Monroe County, which encompasses the Florida Keys island chain, spent eight years raising money, winning permits and persuading regulators to let them sink the decommissioned ship to foster reef development.

Built in 1956 and named for President Rutherford B. Hayes' Ohio estate, the Spiegel Grove saw active duty off Lebanon, in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean during the Cold War.

It sat for a decade at a Navy shipyard on the James River in Virginia, one of 97 decommissioned "ghost ships" mothballed there until someone figures out what to do with them.

Letting them sink on their own would be an environmental and navigational hazard. Maintaining them enough so they don't sink costs $20,000 a year per ship. And federal taxpayers would have to shell out $1.6 million per ship to send them to be cut up at scrap yards.

So giving the ship to Florida, which passed title to Monroe County, was "a hell of a deal for all parties concerned," said Michael Bagley, superintendent for the Virginia ghost fleet.

Islanders raised more than $1 million in local donations and tourism tax pledges for the project. Most of it went to hire contractors who spent 28,000 hours scrubbing and stripping the ship to prevent ocean contamination from fuel residue and now-banned chemicals in the lighting fixtures and wiring.

The Coast Guard had certified it seaworthy, a requirement to ensure it didn't sink accidentally during the five days it took to tow it from Virginia to Florida earlier this month.