New Jersey Scuba Diving

Delaware #11 Artificial Reef

Delaware has quite an active Artificial Reef Program for such a small state. Most of its reefs are located in Delaware Bay and consist of concrete, rock, and rubble, not really of interest to divers. Three of the reefs, Numbers 9, 10, and 11, are in the ocean. Of these, Number 11 is of special interest, since, in addition to three "wrecks" and numerous Army tanks, it contains 619 Redbird subway cars - cars that New Jersey turned away. At least they didn't go very far - these cars were actually closer than some of the 250 that New Jersey eventually sank in our own reefs!

The Red Bird reef site was begun in 1996, taking its name as a derivation of the "Redbird" paint-schemed subway cars donated in 2001 by New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. To build the Red Bird Reef, 619 of the obsolete subway cars were sunk, each of them 51 feet long by nine wide, making a substantial bottom structure for an artificial reef.