Ridge -- The old Woodrow Wilson Bridge sleeps with the fishes.
Chunk by chunk, the bridge that linked Maryland to Virginia and was the bane of commuters in the Interstate 95 corridor, is being hauled to the waters off this St. Mary's County community to create a home for striped bass, bluefish and oysters.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said Bill Curry, president of the Coastal Conservation Association's Maryland chapter, as a massive backhoe shoved a slab of concrete off a barge and into the water yesterday. "This is a huge boon for recreational anglers on the Chesapeake Bay."
Artificial reefs are nothing new. Maryland has 20 others in the bay - from just off Pooles Island in the north to Tangier Sound in the south - and several offshore from Ocean City.
But the demolition of the Wilson Bridge in August created a wealth of fish habitat, enough to fill 60 barges - each the size of a football field - for the waters here and to augment reefs off Solomons and Tangier islands.
"There is just a mother lode of material, sitting, waiting. What we don't have is the funding to get the job done," said Marty Gary, a fisheries biologist with the state Department of Natural Resources. "The [Wilson Bridge] contractor is willing to share costs, but that's money the department doesn't have."
The DNR diverted this year $38,000 in funds generated from fishing license sales to get the program going. It is looking to the legislature and fishing and conservation groups to keep it on track.
"We can reach about a dozen sites from the Wilson Bridge," Gary said. "Reef building is one of our highest priorities,"
Artificial reefs have a checkered past in Maryland.
The state had an active reef-building program from 1980 to the mid-1990s, when it fell victim to budget cuts.
In 2001, Ocean City officials cited pollution concerns when they canceled a contract that would have allowed the New York City Transit Authority to dump as many as 1,300 subway cars in the Atlantic Ocean to form an artificial reef. Federal environmental officials said the fears were unfounded, and the cars were instead dumped 19 miles off the Delaware shore.
But the Ocean City Artificial Reef Foundation, a nonprofit group, has sunk everything from old warships to broken concrete to Army tanks off the coast. More recently, the state has embraced efforts by school groups and organizations such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Maryland Saltwater Sportfishermen's Association to place "reef balls" and chunks of rubble from Memorial Stadium on the bay floor.
