She didn’t get here by accident or as a victim of heavy weather. She was in fact, donated by the Secretary of the Navy of Mexico to be deliberately sunk and serve as an artificial reef. The wreck is working hard to cover itself with a variety of plant life and to make itself a hospitable condo for a growing number of species of underwater organisms.
The plan behind its intentional sinking was to create an alternative dive site to help alleviate the already heavy visitor traffic on nearby reefs. Structures such as oil platforms and ships have been used all over the world to increase colonization of areas of low biological diversity. Intentional wrecks create ideal hard surfaces for a variety of marine organisms, which attach themselves and eventually attract schools of ornamental as well as economically important species of fish and other creatures.
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