Junk reef removed off California

LOS ANGELES — Divers are removing hundreds of old tires, plastic jugs and other junk that was dumped off the Southern California coast nearly 30 years ago by a man who thought he was helping the ocean environment.

The cleanup began this month off Newport Beach, the California Coastal Commission announced.

“It’s about time this was cleaned up. Dumping plastic and other trash into our oceans is not the way to restore the marine ecosystem,” commission chairman Dayna Bochco said in a statement. “There is an estimated 18 billion pounds of plastic that enters the world’s oceans every year and we must do what we can to clean this up.”

In 1988, Rodolphe Streichenberger created what he described as an experimental, artificial reef.

The reef covered several acres of ocean floor and consisted of 1,500 used automobile tires, 2,000 one-gallon plastic jugs covered with plastic mesh, 100 sections of PVC pipe and other items, including fishing net, Styrofoam and iron roads, the commission said.

Streichenberger believed the reef would spur the growth of kelp forests, provide a place to grow mussels and rebuild ocean habitat.

The materials are “absolutely harmless,” Streichenberger told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. “You have seen no impact. Only fish. It’s very good for the fish.”

But his research was “deeply flawed,” according to the Coastal Commission.

“State scientists said the tires contained harmful toxins, the material was not dense enough to anchor to the ocean floor and warned the discarded netting and ropes could trap fish and marine mammals,” the commission said in its statement.

“It’s hard to believe there was a time when someone thought this was a good idea,” commission executive director Jack Ainsworth said.

Streichenberger died in 2006 at 77.