Today, divers and snorkelers still come to visit it. There’s an old army tank sitting on a sandy sea floor off the coast of Aqaba, in southern Jordan, with colorful fish darting around its tracks. It may sound like a video game level, but it is real. The booklet claims that it is the second most famous diving site in Aqaba.
A joint 2020 publication from Aqaba’s tourism directorate, Aqaba Marine Park, and a Jordanian marine conservation society, a retired M42 “Duster” anti-aircraft gun was sunk in September 1999 to serve as an artificial reef, according to the official Wrecks of Aqaba photobook .
It first served in the Royal Jordanian Army. The tiles were placed on two artificial and two natural reefs near Eilat, Israel, at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, across the gulf from the Jordanian site. The invertebrate biomass, or the total weight of animals without backbones, tended to be higher on the artificial reefs. The authors say their findings suggest artificial reefs can boost some groups of reef, especially ones in sheltered locations. But the mix of sea life on the undersides of the tiles was different between artificial and natural reefs. The study also did not examine the tank, so it cannot show how this wreck compares. Artificial reefs are not the same as natural ones, and Aqaba still has plenty of natural reef to protect. A sunken tank just gives divers another place to explore and gives marine life one more place to settle. If you plan to visit, book with a certified instructor and inquire about conditions on the day.
The vehicle is an American-built, 40 mm self-propelled anti-aircraft gun. In September 1999, it was sunk as an artificial reef by the Royal Marine Conservation Society of Jordan (JREDS). In a 2019 study published in PLOS ONE , Emily Higgins and colleagues tracked how sea life settled on ceramic tiles over 13 months. The Gulf of Aqaba has more than 300 hard and soft coral species and more than 510 fish species, the booklet says.
Because corals and sponges are alive and can be easily damaged, look but don’t touch,.
Its nickname is “The Tank,” and it is just 5.8 meters in length.
