Reclaiming Fishermen’s Paradise: History of Waste Reefs in Southern Florida

This article examines the emergence and transformation of waste-based artificial reefs in southern Florida during the late 1960s and 1970s. It traces how early community-led efforts to restore declining fisheries, grounded in local ecological knowledge and practical experience, developed into large-scale projects that used discarded tyres and other waste materials. Drawing on newspaper accounts, scientific publications and corporate archival materials, the study shows how businesses such as Goodyear and the Deltona Corporation appropriated reef-building to address their own waste-management, reputational and regulatory concerns. As corporate actors increasingly shaped the practice, reef-building shifted from grassroots ecological restoration to a means of disposing of solid waste at sea, publicly framed as environmental improvement. The long-term consequences – including the instability of tyre reefs, widespread ecological damage and costly public clean-up operations – reveal how restoration rhetoric obscured material risks and redistributed responsibility to state agencies and volunteers. By analysing how practical, regulatory and promotional logics became intertwined, the article demonstrates how environmental interventions can be transformed when they begin to serve the interests of larger actors, and highlights the need to scrutinise the processes through which environmental practices acquire legitimacy.