26 May 2009:
World War II ship is going to become the second largest artificial reef.
The company called Reefmakers is preparing a massive World War II battleship for sinking Wednesday seven miles off Key West. It will be one of the world's biggest artificial reefs. Explosives will be used to open the ship for flooding which should quickly send it to the seabed.
The cost is over 8 million dollars from acquiring the ship to cleaning it.
The 523-foot-long ship will not only attract divers but will help to protect the Key's natural reefs, that are already suffer from excessive diving, snorkelling and fishing along with warming ocean temperatures.
The crew has spent months preparing the ship for sinking. Workers hauled off more than a million feet of wire, 193 tons of potentially cancer-causing substances, 1,500 vent gaskets, 81 bags of asbestos, dozens of watertight steel doors, 46 tons of garbage that could come loose and float to the surface, 300 pounds of materials containing mercury and 185 55-gallon drums of paint chips.
The ship is called Vandenberg and it was used by the Army as a transport vessel, delivering troops and supplies from San Francisco to island bases in the western Pacific Ocean in 1944.
After that it was used by the Navy as a transport ship, and was transferred to the Air Force in 1961.
Vandenberg also served as a missile tracker during the Cold War and was retired in 1983.
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