Car tyre reef scrapped after failing to entice Riviera sealife

AN EXPERIMENT in the Eighties in which 25,000 car tyres were dumped into the crystal-clear waters off the French Riviera to create a sanctuary for sealife is being cleaned up after it was found to be polluting.

Divers and a specially equipped boat with lifting gear have been fishing out hundreds of the old loops of rubber about 1,600ft from the coastline between the towns of Cannes and Antibes.

The original vision, backed by local French authorities at the time and fishermen, was that the tyres would become populated by coral and other sea creatures in a conservation area where fishing was off limits.

A local academic working on the clean-up operation said authorities in other countries, particularly the US, had previously attempted a “tyre reef ” without success.

“We hoped that we could restore aquatic life there, but it didn’t work,” the deputy mayor of Antibes, Eric Duplay said. “It turns out that the tyre reef was not a prolific place for biomass.”

Denis Genovese, the head of an association of local fishermen, confirmed that most Mediterranean life forms had shunned the idea of living inside madmade products manufactured out of rubber, resins, oil and other chemicals.

Sedentary creatures such as the local scorpion fish did not use them, Mr Genovese said, while “grouper fish, conger eels and sea bream swim around them, but no species really got used to it”.

A study in 2005 by the University of Nice showed that the tyres were leaking toxic chemicals, including heavy metals. Authorities were also worried that they could degrade further, and break up into smaller pieces which would be a risk for nearby seagrass meadows.