Osborne Reef
Coordinates: 26°06′27″N 80°03′54″W / 26.10748333°N 80.06493333°W
Osborne Reef is an artificial reef off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, constructed of concrete jacks in a 50 feet (15 m) diameter circle.
In the 1970s, the reef was the subject of an ambitious expansion project utilizing old and discarded tires. The project ultimately failed, and the "reef" has come to be considered an environmental disaster—ultimately doing more harm than good in the coastal Florida waters.
In 2007, after several false starts, cleanup efforts began when the United States military took on the project. This cleanup exercise provides the military with a real-world training environment for their diving and recovery personnel, coupled with the benefit of helping the Florida coast without incurring significant costs to the state.
In 1972, Broward Artificial Reef Inc. (BARINC) proposed the construction of an enlarged artificial reef to Broward County as a way to both dispose of old tires as well as lure more game fish to the area. Similarly designed reefs had already been constructed in the Northeastern United States, the neighboring Gulf of Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, and Africa. Gregory McIntosh, an employee of BARINC, lauded the project to the attendees of a 1974 conference on artificial reefs: "Tires, which were an esthetic pollutant ashore, could be recycled, so to speak, to build a fishing reef at sea."
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