Image Credits: Wikimedia CommonsLive EventsLike the Kuşadası Airbus, the USS Oriskany shows how retired vehicles get a second life underwater.
It was still one of the largest planes ever purposely sunk as an artificial reef at the time.
In a 1998 paper in the journal Ambio, marine researcher Dan Wilhelmsson and his co-authors studied how these artificial sites worked as dive destinations.
But exactly how a wreck such as the Kuşadası Airbus affects local ecology depends on water conditions, currents, and how long it remains undisturbed.
Among the few who considered artificial sites to be worthwhile, it was found that the appreciation for the shipwrecks themselves was the most common factor among them.
An Airbus A300 similar to the one now resting off Kuşadası's coast. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons
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Like the Kuşadası Airbus, the USS Oriskany shows how retired vehicles get a second life underwater. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons
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Somewhere off the coast of Kuşadası, a resort town in western Turkey , a 177-foot Airbus A300 has been sitting on the seafloor since June 2016. Nobody crashed it. Local officials sank it on purpose. It may sound strange, but it fits a pattern researchers have tracked for years. The practice of intentionally sinking structures to create underwater habitat is older than the Kuşadası project by decades. In the 1970s, state and federal entities in the United States began experimenting with sanctioned artificial reefs, typically framed as habitat restoration projects designed to create new homes for marine life. Since then, decommissioned ships, subway cars, and even military aircraft have been deliberately sunk across coastlines worldwide. Research shows that artificial reefs tend to host high concentrations of fish and attract large predators such as sharks and barracudas that congregate in the water column above the structure, making them magnets for divers and recreational fishers alike. According to a 2022 study on Turkey’s wreck-reef projects by fisheries researchers Aytaç Özgül and Altan Lök, sinking retired vehicles to create diving spots has become an established strategy along the Turkish coast, and the Kuşadası Airbus is one of the boldest examples of it.Turkey had sunk smaller aircraft before, but none on such a grand scale. The Aydın provincial government purchased the retired A300 for about 270,000 Turkish liras, which was about $100,000 at that time. It took more than two hours to bring the plane to rest about 75 feet below the water, with crowds gathered on nearby boats to watch. It was still one of the largest planes ever purposely sunk as an artificial reef at the time. Özlem Çerçioğlu, the then mayor of Aydın, set out to pursue two objectives through this project: transforming Kuşadası into a tourist destination specializing in diving activities, and preserving the marine life in the area. Both goals reflect the same idea: a strategically placed wreck can draw divers away from sensitive natural areas while giving the local economy something else to sell.Özgül and Lök’s research explains that diving is very popular in Turkey, but many of the country’s most interesting underwater areas are off-limits, being within archeological zones, military zones, or protected nature reserves. That leaves a gap for divers looking for legal and interesting places to explore. Artificial reefs, including sunken vehicles, have increasingly been used to fill that gap and create alternative diving points along the coast, Özgül and Lök found.However, dropping the plane into the water does not automatically make a reef. One of the earliest studies on this topic was conducted in Eilat, Israel, on the Red Sea coast, where the government had already tried such artificial formations. In a 1998 paper in the journal Ambio, marine researcher Dan Wilhelmsson and his co-authors studied how these artificial sites worked as dive destinations. But exactly how a wreck such as the Kuşadası Airbus affects local ecology depends on water conditions, currents, and how long it remains undisturbed. These are principles the Eilat researchers established as general findings, not conclusions drawn from the Kuşadası site itself, which didn't exist until nearly two decades later.All of these studies have not been without their fair share of critics. A more recent study published in Science of the Total Environment, authored by Louise Firth et al., conducted a survey of recreational scuba divers and found that the majority were still in favor of diving at natural sites rather than artificial ones. Only 49% of those surveyed felt that the artificial reefs were important or fairly important to them. That finding complicates the tourism logic behind projects like Kuşadası's: an artificial wreck can still draw divers and headlines, but it isn't necessarily what most divers say they'd choose given the option. Among the few who considered artificial sites to be worthwhile, it was found that the appreciation for the shipwrecks themselves was the most common factor among them. Planes and ships that are sunk to the bottom of the sea do not substitute for coral reefs.Kuşadası’s sinking took place at a particular time. In the run-up to 2016, Turkey’s tourism industry had been struggling, and officials had been working hard to find new ways to pull visitors back to the coast. The artificial reef created from a retired jet was significantly more affordable than building a new attraction from the ground up, and it offered a ready-made headline that traveled far beyond Turkey.For travelers considering dive destinations, the Kuşadası Airbus is a reminder that some celebrated dive sites are not natural at all. These are old machines given a second life. Today’s divers aren’t just peering at a plane. They’re seeing years of slow change, one barnacle and one fish at a time, at the site where officials placed the plane in 2016. Sometimes it means assigning a strange new job to something old, 75 feet under the waves.
