An example - Isla Mujeres Marin Park (Mexico)

A good example of a well designed, well planned, and well-executed artificial reef can be found in the National Marine Park of Isla Mujeres in Mexico. This national park was established in 1996 in the Caribbean marine area delimited by Cancun, Isla Mujeres and Puerto Morelos in the southern state of Quintana Roo.
The reef (so far) consists of two decommissioned minesweepers, gifted to the park by the Secreteria Armada de Mexico (SM-AM). These are the C-58 Anaya and C-55 Juan de la Barrera. The vessels, each 60 feet long and of 1000-ton displacement, were sunk at a depth of 83 feet/25 meters on May 28 and October 25, 2000, respectively.
The park management decided to use the “artificial reef strategy” to try and protect its coralline barrier because of the important ecological and tourist value it offers. Future plans by the park’s monitoring project includes the sinking of several additional structures to provide further building blocks for new marine ecosystems. These will be strategically placed around the marine park area to create alternative diving sites for the burgeoning scuba industry and to reduce the environmental impact caused by scuba diving activities on natural marine ecosystems.
The project expected the sinking of different artificial structures that should be positioned in the around of the marine park to create situated alternatives for the underwater activity, reducing so the impact on the natural barriers. Projects like these represent important enterprises, regardless of whether they are intended for scientific or recreational ends. Apart from whether an artificial reef program serves scientific interests of acquiring information on marine ecosystem colonization or whether it serves economic or recreational interest geared towards open water divers, by enabling divers to observe a beautiful coral reef without stressing a fragile and irreplaceable habitat, it provides everyone concerned—human and nonhuman—with an invaluable service. It was been foreseen, besides, a monitoring of the area to evaluate the reaction of the environment to the placing of the wreck and to quantify also the necessary times because an "artificial barrier" could reach an environmental state of balance.
The project took life with the sinking of two minesweepers in the zone of Point Cancun, which were given by the Secreteria Armada de Mexico (SM-AM), the C-58 “Anaya” and the C-55 “Juan the Barrera”. Both vessels are long about 60 m, wide 10 m of about 1000 tons of displacement, and they were sunk respectively 28th of May 2000 and 25th of October 2000 to a depth of about 25 meters.
The site was selected keeping in debt consideration the oceanographic features of the area; the vessels were been cleaned by means of the removal of potential sources of contamination and creating, after to have removed all of the material “unsafe”, facilities to the passage of the sub; the preparation of the ships was realized for most in the port of Tampico, under the supervision of an expert in sinking and of the Secreteria de Marina Armada de México (SM-AM)