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musicambience: Boat Sounds, Subway cars being dumped into Delaware BayWhat's nine feet wide, eleven feet high, fifty-two feet long and used by both straphangers and starfish? I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet. To help the fish population of Delaware Bay survive, scientists are creating artificial reefs which are home to mussels and other creatures that fish feed on. And to form the skeleton of the reef they're using old New York City subways cars."We will leave from Slaughter Beach, Delaware and take about an hour and a half to two hour ride out to Site Eleven, which is just out of sight of land, and out there we will meet the tugboat Elizabeth, about a two hundred fifty foot barge with about thirty one of these subway cars on it." Right now we're out on a barge in Delaware Bay with Jeff Tinsman, artificial reef Coordinator for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources. "There's a large track excavator and bulldozers that are used to uh, push these subway cars off. It's a lot of metal on metal scraping as they're being pushed across the surface of the barge. They sink rather slowly. I was surprised the first time I saw it -- takes five or six seconds for each one to disappear. The heavier part is the floor so no matter how they go off they seem to right themselves as they sink and gradually slide under the surface of the water."According to Jeff Tinsman, the subway car artificial reef project has been a success, attracting both fish and the species that they feed upon. Pulse of the Planet is presented with support provided by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner. music