They used to shuttle folks into New York’s Times Square. Now seabass, flounder and tautog take refuge in the dilapidated subway cars off Delaware’s coast. An otherwise desolate bottom has become a magnet for fish and fishermen.

“They’re basically luxury condominiums for fish,” said Jeff Tinsman to the New York Times. Tinsman is an artificial reef program manager for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources. There are more than 600 subway cars already on the ocean floor. Each car weighs about 19 tons.

One of Delaware’s most popular reefs is Red Bird Reef, named after New York City’s famous Redbird subway cars. It supports more than 10,000 angler trips annually, reports the New York Times.

Of late, the reefs have drawn pelagics such as tuna and mackerel, which use the subway cars as hunting grounds for smaller prey.

Delaware has had so much success with subway car reefs that New York and New Jersey now want a portion as well. This year, New Jersey (which stopped taking the cars in 2003 because of environmental concerns) asked the city for 600 of them.

New York will get the majority of the subway cars in the future. New York wants all of the city’s retired subway cars once the United States Army Corps of Engineers updates their state’s reef permit this summer. As a good-faith gesture, the city will probably offer about 100 cars to Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey before out-of-state deliveries are stopped, reports the Times. See the whole story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/us/08reef.html