A plan to create artificial reefs in Puget Sound using automotive tires was created by Washington’s Department of Natural Resources.
OLYMPIA, Wash. — Puget Sound is about 100 miles long.
Its shores touch several large cities, including Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Olympia, and Bremerton.
The Sound, called “Whulge” by the Salish people, spelled phonetically from the Lushootseed dialect, denotes the sound of waves.
In 1792, British navigator George Vancouver explored it and named it after Peter Puget, a second lieutenant in his expedition, who probed the main channel.
Fast forward to the 1960s.
A plan to create artificial reefs in Puget Sound using automotive tires was created by Washington’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to attract native reef fish to bolster recreational fishing opportunities across the state.
Tires strung together with polypropylene twine were placed at the bottom of Puget Sound in the 1970s and 1980s.
This long stretch of water, which varies from one to 5 miles wide, has been home to tens of thousands of car and truck tires.
However, the tire reef plan fell flat.
According to DNR, the artificial tire structures were deemed unsuccessful.
In one reference, DNR said these bundled tires went from “reefs” to just piles of tires more quickly than anyone could have anticipated.
Concerns have been growing around the environmental impact they may have on the local environment and species that exist around them.
“When the ropes that tie them together dissolve, they can end up spreading out and actually damaging habitat and damaging wildlife, instead of enhancing it over time,” said Dave Upthegrove, Washington State Public Lands commissioner.
The average Washington resident, born here or not, may be wondering why this happened in the first place.
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Upthegrove said. “At the time, it seemed like a good idea based on what they knew then, and now we’re doing the best thing we can for salmon and orca and habitat based on what we know now.”
Upthegrove said to protect the iconic King Salmon and Puget Sound Orca, current work is guided by the best available science.
“We are constantly learning and evolving in order to make sure that we’re doing things correctly,” Upthegrove said.
The toll to take out tires
The work to remove the tires has just begun.
The agency said the first phase of DNR’s Tire Pile cleanup effort was to initiate a comprehensive survey and mapping effort of potential Tire Pile sites.
The “pilot program” was made possible by state legislative funds.
Of more than 35 possible “Tire Pile locations,” DNR worked alongside the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) to identify 20 locations based on their State Owned Aquatic Lands (SOAL) placement and the likelihood of having a substantial number of tires.
Upthegrove said removing all the tires they have located so far will likely cost more than $7 million.
DNR is relying on state legislative funds to continue the work and complete the project over a few years.
Next stop for removed tires
Once the tires are removed, they are loaded directly from the removal barge onto disposal trucks, according to Cassidy Biondo, the DNR project manager for tire removal.
“They are then sent off to a tire monofil facility as they are not fit for a regular landfill or for tire recycling due to their condition,” Biondo said.
The tires must go to a facility that only accepts tire waste.
Too many tires to track
DNR is facing a major challenge.
It does not know exactly how many tires are in Puget Sound.
A few thousand tires were lugged out of Puget Sound in late fall 2024.
In just one area, DNR removed about 2,500 tires by Tolmie State Park near the mouth of the Nisqually River.
It’s estimated there are more than 100,000 across the waterway, but it’s estimated there are at least 30% more than that, according to Biondo, who said groups outside of DNR submerged tires on their own in non-SOAL areas.
An example of the “underestimation” happened at a removal site outside of Harstine Island Park in Shelton.
Biondo said the site was thought to have an estimated 3,000 tires.
“We ended up pulling out almost 5,000 tires,” Biondo said. “Our conservative estimate is 30 percent more than what we [surveyed]. We did our best to survey and confirm these numbers, but there are tires that are buried. There are more tires and bundles than we expected.”
In total, Biondo said 4,701 tires were removed as part of this two-site pilot removal effort. These tires went directly to a tire monofil facility for disposal.
In Puget Sound waters near Burfoot Park in Olympia, Biondo said DNR is estimating about 17,000 tires and about 15,000 near Fry Cove County Park. Those two sites are scheduled for removal this summer.
Depleted recreational fishing
According to DNR, the growing interest and uptick in recreational bottom fishing quickly spurred a depletion in their populations.
The department said rockfish and lingcod have life histories that make them particularly vulnerable to overfishing and they were rapidly depleted from the few rocky outcroppings in Puget Sound that naturally supported them.
This sparked the artificial tire reef plan.
Artificial tire reef sites were subsequently chosen based on the survey results, according to DNR, as well as proximity to piers, state parks, and areas where bottom substrate lacked complexity.
Tires removed, life thrives
“There was a bunch of tires, actually near where the octopus den was built, but we helped move some of those tires and right when we remove those tires is right when she moved in,” Jessica Alexanderson said. “The [new] den is made out of rock structure.”
Alexanderson, of Bellevue, has been scuba diving since 2014.
Finding tires in Puget Sound was shocking.
“It’s just absolutely terrible,” Alexanderson said. “Every single dive site I’ve been to has tires.”
Alexanderson and her dive buddies do regular underwater trash pickups. The hauls have included several tires over the years.
A Giant Pacific Octopus, lovingly named “Olive,” has been one of the main attractions for scuba divers at Redondo Beach in Des Moines in the past year.
Per the life cycle of a mother octopus of this species, Olive died after living as long as she could in her den, where she laid thousands of eggs.
She does not leave to eat. Instead, she will stay in the den to protect her eggs from predators and provide oxygen to them.
Watching those eggs hatch and documenting this amazing nature has become one of Alexanderson’s favorite experiences thus far.
Learning from a treaded past
“The health of the Puget Sound, the health of our environment, affects us,” said Rus Higley, the director of Highline College’s MaST Center Aquarium. “One of the reasons. climate change is worse, is because the environment is less healthy.”
The MaST Center is located on the shores of Puget Sound at Redondo Beach in Des Moines.
Higley said one of the best ways for people to become protectors of Puget Sound is to learn about the marine ecosystem and its current issues.
While there are major pollution and destruction concerns surrounding the polypropylene twine that bundles the tires, Higley said there are Puget Sound creatures, such as urchins, that could be “chiseling” away at tires, consuming particles, or releasing particles into the water.
The MaST Center houses more than 250 species of marine life native to Puget Sound and the surrounding waters.
It’s a teaching aquarium that invited the public to open house days. Children and their families are welcome to visit from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays. There are plans to open on Sundays starting this summer.
Visitors will see an aquarium that holds 3,000 gallons of seawater, a 38-foot Gray Whale skeleton and other marine mammal skeletons, and experience two touch tanks.
Alexanderson and fellow scuba divers Eric Askilsrud and Shou-Wei Chang contributed photos of Olive and other dive experiences for this report.