Lee County's USS Mohawk artificial reef is always something to behold
Mark H. Bickel, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News
Mon, December 22, 2025 at 10:02 AM UTC
2 min read
Lee County has the distinction of being the home of the first Veterans Memorial Reef dedicated to all U.S. veterans using a military ship.
On July 2, 2012, the USS Mohawk was towed from Fort Myers some 30 miles off of Sanibel Island before being scuttled in 90 feet of water by six strategically placed charges meant to allow it to rest upright.
The 165-foot vessel played a part in World War II combat operations, serving U.S. Naval forces in the North Atlantic; during the war the ship was named the USS Mohawk CGC.
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According to the Lee County website, in order to ensure no negative environmental impacts from its aging equipment, experts cleaned and prepared the ship prior to sending it on its last voyage.
In May of 2013, the USS Mohawk was transformed into an underwater art gallery.
Andreas Franke, an Austrian photographer, and a team installed 12 images within the USS Mohawk to create a gallery that ran through Sept. 14 of 2013.
The images were based on the history of the USS Mohawk, which survived 14 Nazi U-boat attacks and is the last remaining ship of the Battle of the Atlantic.
Franke superimposed images of models in period clothing onto original photos from the ship in present-day to envision the lives of the sailors who were once aboard it. He previously hosted other underwater exhibitions of his work, including on the USS Vandenberg, which rests off the Key West coast.
What is an artificial reef?
According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission website, and artificial reef is one or more objects of natural or human origin intentionally placed on the seafloor to enhance marine life for human use through the creation of new reef habitat.
Artificial reefs in Florida: What to know
According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission website, Florida has one of the most active artificial reef programs among the 15 Gulf and Atlantic coastal states involved in artificial reef development. Since the 1940s, more than 4,300 planned public artificial reefs have been placed in state and federal waters off Florida’s coast. The FWC Artificial Reef Program provides financial and technical assistance to coastal local governments, nonprofit corporations and state universities to construct, monitor and assess artificial reefs.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: What are the artificial reefs in Lee County, Florida?