Sea Sabres Scuba Diving club, Southern
California, Fullerton
Sea
Sabres
737 Does not Sink,
By Robert Cooke
The new reef was to be from QWEST
AIRPARTS of Memphis Tennessee. They gave of a retired Boeing 737 airframe to
the Artificial Reef Society of BC for placing as an artificial reef.
The
first 737 flew in 1968 and was delivered to Lufthansa. The 737-100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800,
and 900 has been the most successful commercial aircraft of all time, and is
still Boeing best selling plane after 35 years.
The
group ARSBC or Artificial Reef Society of British Columbia was planning to be
place the aircraft somewhere in Howe Sound.
The project had been in the works for over six months. Unfortunately the cost proved of the project
proved to high.
Joe
Venuto, who is based in Qwests Deerfield Beach, Florida, location said that they
were very pleased to be able to make the airframe available to the divers in
the Vancouver area. "The plane was built in the 1970s and is 100 feet
long, has a 96 foot wingspan, and in its stripped state weighs about 20 tonnes.
She was recently decommissioned after having served the people of Canada very
well for many years and now goes on to a whole other career, with our best
wishes."
The
Artificial Reef Society has cancel the Airframe Sinking in Howe Sound
The
ARSBC announced March 14,2003 that the planned placement of a Boeing 737
airframe as an artificial reef in Howe Sound would not take place.
Tex
Enemark, President of the ARSBC, expressed disappointment at this turn of
events, since the ARSBC had invested a great deal of effort in the project,
which enjoys enormous support in the recreational diving community.
"We
have been working for over a year to bring an artificial reef to the Vancouver
area. That we were unable to agree with dive industry members on the terms to
finance the project has been most unfortunate.
"However,
said Enemark, we are going to canvass the dive operators and tourism officials
in other communities for support before we give up entirely on placing it
somewhere. Failing that, we have no choice but to scrap it."
"It
seems to be agreed that that the overall economics of the project are clearly
very positive that, for instance, the net benefit to the local dive industry
could be recovered within a year of the reef's placement. This project could
reasonably be expected to add several hundred thousand dollars to the Lower
Mainland dive tourism industry annually."
"However,
the dive industry is small, and there simply are no mechanisms available to
cause those dive operators and others who will benefit from the project to help
pay for it. The cost of the project--less than $60,000--was not something the
ARSBC could afford to undertake on its own," he concluded.
Other
artificial reefs placed by the ARSBC in BC coastal communities have
significantly increased the dive tourism industry, and brought long overdue
world-wide attention to BC's diving opportunities. For example, Nanaimo's
artificial reefs hare estimated to add several million dollars to the local
economy, and have made Nanaimo an international destination for scuba divers
and the subject of numerous articles in leading international scuba diving
magazines.
Read
about our members dive in Vancouver.
Posted March 25, 2003
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