History
The construction of artificial reefs is thousands of years old. Ancient Persians blocked the mouth of the Tigris River to thwart Indian pirates by building an artificial reef, and during the First Punic War the Romans built a reef across the mouth of the Carthaginian harbor in Sicily to trap the enemy ships within and assist in driving the Carthaginians from the island.
Artificial reefs to increase fish yields or for algaculture have been used at least since 17th century Japan, when rubble and rocks were used to grow kelp, while the earliest recorded construction of artificial reef in the United States is from 1830s when logs from huts were used off the coast of South Carolina to improve fishing.
Since at least the 1830s, American fishermen used interlaced logs to build artificial reefs. More recently, castaway junk, such as old refrigerators, shopping carts, ditched cars, out-of-service vending machines replaced the logs in ad hoc reefs. Officially sanctioned projects have incorported decommissioned subway cars, vintage battle tanks, armored personnel carriers and oil drilling rigs.
Read more about this topic: Artificial Reef
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“I believe my ardour for invention springs from his loins. I can’t say that the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”
—Caresse Crosby (1892–1970)