The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

Also from ENN, an interesting experiment in marine restoration through recycling dead ships:

Friday, October 10, 2003
By Tomas Sarmiento, Reuters


GUABINA BAY, Venezuela — For the last few years, the Venezuelan tug boat Gran Roque was a rusting, rat-infested shell anchored off the Caribbean harbor of Puerto Cabello.

But last month when divers turned the wreck into Venezuela's first human-made reef, the corroded holes that once made walking on its steel deck a hazard became underwater windows beneath the clear turquoise waters of Guabina Bay.

The man responsible for converting Gran Roque from a heap of scrap metal into a marine experiment said that in a few years the boat will become a haven for sea life and coral formations and an amusement park for divers.

"In three years it will be teeming with fish and coral," said Cesar Navas, a deeply tanned scuba diving instructor who convinced Venezuelan authorities that the ship would be better off lying 98 feet under water.

"Instead of dying as a rat-infested piece of junk, we are turning it into a beautiful artificial reef which will shelter sea life and also will be a divers' playground," he said as he prepared to sink the boat in the waters off Aragua state, about 110 miles west of Caracas.

The 98-foot long, 217-ton Gran Roque was built in Venezuela's state-owned shipyards in 1973 to serve domestic ports, but lack of maintenance finally crippled the vessel for good seven years ago. Abandoned alongside the dock, the tug became a haven for the homeless and filled with trash and graffiti until Navas' team took over the task of cleaning it up before sending it to the bottom of Guabina Bay.

Blazing Farewell

Navas said he wanted to give "a decent send-off" to a ship that had a mostly peaceful life except for one moment of glory in 1976 when its crew rescued tourists whose hydrofoil collided with a sperm whale off Margarita Island.

Gran Roque went to the bottom with a powerful boom...(Read on in: Rusty Venezuela tug starts new life as marine reef)