Miami, May 18 (EFE).– Florida officials are spending $1.6 million on a project to remove about 90,000 tires dumped into the Atlantic Ocean off Fort Lauderdale in the 1970s as part of an artificial reef project, media reports said Monday.

A team of divers began removing the tires last week from the ocean floor off Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, the Sun Sentinel newspaper said.

The project is expected to take two years to complete, with divers removing the tires from an area about one mile offshore.

The Osborne Tire Reef was supposed to serve as a home for fish and coral when conceived in the 1970s, but it ended up being a misguided project that proved harmful to the environment.

In one day in 1972 alone, more than 100 boats dumped hundreds of steel-belted tires into the ocean off Fort Lauderdale, the newspaper said.

“What remains today is an eerie, virtually lifeless vista of tires stretching across 35 acres,” the Sun-Sentinel said.

“There are just tires for as far as you can see,” Pat Quinn, a biologist with Broward County who is serving as local project manager, said. EFE