SS United States Has Just Been Sunk—What Happens Next? - Newsweek

The SS United States has completed its final voyage, but beneath the waters off Florida its transformation is only beginning.

The 990-foot former ocean liner was deliberately sunk off Destin-Fort Walton Beach on November 11 to become an artificial reef. Okaloosa County selected a site roughly 22 nautical miles (25.3 miles) southwest of the coast, with plans for the vessel to rest on the seafloor, about 180 feet below the surface.

Officials expect the enormous steel structure to eventually provide marine life with a place to live, but research into other artificial reefs suggests its biological development will happen in stages, beginning almost immediately and continuing for years.

Researchers at the University of Florida IFAS Extension say baitfish can begin moving around a newly sunk vessel or artificial reef within hours. Over the following months, the structure becomes progressively colonized by organisms including barnacles, plants and soft corals, before species such as snapper and grouper establish themselves around it.

The researchers also estimate that an artificial reef can take around three to five years to reach its full potential as a well-established habitat for fish and other marine life.

An older study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) monitored fish on a large reefed vessel in the Texas Gulf of Mexico for a decade. It found that the fish community continued to change until it eventually "stabilized after five years," while the variety of species increased over time.

The SS United States joins a long line of vessels that have been deliberately sunk and turned into homes for marine life.

One particular vessel was the 911-foot USS Oriskany, a former aircraft carrier that was deliberately sunk off the Pensacola Pass, Florida, in May 2006. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) says that the carrier rests upright in approximately 212 feet of water, with its flight deck around 145 to 150 feet down.

The SS United States is 79 feet longer, and county tourism officials said its upper deck should be approximately 55 to 60 feet beneath the surface, which means it should be "accessible to all levels of certified divers."

Florida has extensive experience with artificial reefs. FWC says that more than 4,548 planned public artificial reefs have been placed in state and federal waters off Florida since the 1940s.

This is where the science becomes a little more complicated.

Researchers have debated for decades whether artificial reefs increase the overall production of fish by providing new habitat that improves feeding, survival, and reproduction, or whether they primarily attract fish that were already living elsewhere and concentrate them into one location, making them easier to catch.

A NOAA-led review of 39 peer-reviewed studies found that artificial reefs generally supported "similar amounts and varieties of fish as neighboring rocky or coral reefs."

But that doesn't automatically mean artificial reefs create additional fish.

The University of Florida IFAS describes the issue as the longstanding "attraction vs. production" debate and says the answer depends on circumstances. If fish are caught faster than the reef helps produce new ones, then it could simply concentrate existing populations, making them easier to catch, rather than increasing the overall number of fish.

James A. Bohnsack, a scientist with NOAA Fisheries, supports this argument. He said that, while fishing around artificial reefs isn’t necessarily problematic, these types of reefs can "accelerate overfishing by concentrating remaining adults and making them easier to locate and more vulnerable to fishing."

The unusually large size of the SS United States could now help scientists investigate exactly that sort of question.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is working with Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Louisiana State University and the Destin-Fort Walton Beach Natural Resources Team. The institution is participating in a research program intended to follow the site's ecological development for at least a decade.

Researchers have identified roughly 132 permanently marked monitoring locations on the ship so that they can repeatedly examine the same locations as organisms colonize it. The locations were set up using a systematic site-selection and marking methodology. This will make sure there is consistent spatial coverage, repeatable observations, and reliable long-term monitoring of environmental conditions.

Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser, a marine biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said the vessel could also help scientists understand the ecological consequences of the growing amount of human-made infrastructure in the oceans.

"Artificial structures are becoming more and more common through a process called ocean sprawl; humans expanding our own habitats and infrastructure offshore," Meyer-Kaiser said. "The SS United States can serve as an analogue for understanding some of the same processes that might be happening on other artificial structures."

So, while fish could appear around America's former flagship almost immediately, it will likely take several years to become something resembling a mature, established artificial-reef community. Determining whether its extraordinary new population of marine residents represents newly produced life or simply life drawn from elsewhere could take much longer.

Newsweek has contacted Destin-Fort Walton Beach, Meyer-Kaiser from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Dr. Avery B. Paxton from NOAA for comment and is awaiting responses.

Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.