FORT LAUDERDALE -- Divers began removing up to 2 million old tires from the ocean floor Monday after a plan in the 1970s to create an artificial reef became an ecological disaster.

The well-intentioned idea was to create new marine habitat and alternate dive sites with what was touted as the world's largest artificial tire reef. The plan also served to dispose of tires that were clogging landfills.

 But little sea life formed on the tires dumped about a mile offshore in 1972. Some of the bundles bound together with nylon and steel have broken loose and are scouring the ocean floor and washing up on beaches. Others are wedging up against the nearby natural reef, blocking coral growth and devastating marine life.

Army and Navy salvage divers, as part their annual training exercises, began the task of removing the tires Monday, said William Nuckols, coordinator for Coastal America, a federal government group involved in organizing the cleanup effort.

Monday's effort marks the start of a monthlong pilot project intended ``to practice various salvage techniques so we know the right people and equipment to bring when we do this for several months each year for the next several years,'' Nuckols said.

The tires will be trucked to a Georgia facility where they will be burned to create energy to power a paper recycling plant, he said.

The entire operation is expected to run through 2010.

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