It took only days to create what was touted as the world’s largest artificial reef in 1972, when a well-intentioned group dumped hundreds of thousands of old tires into the ocean.

But the tires turned out to be a reef killer, turning a swath of ocean floor the size of 31 football fields into a dead zone. Now divers expect to spend years hauling them to the surface.

Weather permitting, divers will spend the summer months for the next three years bringing up the 700,000 tires while leaving behind the ones that seem to have remained in place — at least for now.

The tires will be trucked to a Georgia facility where they will be burned to power a paper recycling plant at a cost to Florida of $2 million.

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19102112/ “Read the Story”) (AP via MSNBC)