This cleanup exercise provided the military with a real-world training environment for their diving and recovery personnel, coupled with the benefit of helping the Florida coast without incurring significant costs to the state.

Similarly designed reefs had already been constructed in the Northeastern United States, the neighboring Gulf of Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, and Africa.

That spring, more than 100 privately owned boats enthusiastically volunteered to assist with the project; accompanied by the US Navy's USS Thrush, thousands of tire bundles were simultaneously dropped onto the reef.

Furthermore, the tires were now easily subject to the tropical winds and storms that frequent the east coast of Florida, and continue to collide, at times with tremendous force, with natural coral reefs only 70 feet (21 m) away: compounding their futility with environmentally damaging side-effects.

In 2001, Dr. Robin Sherman of Nova Southeastern University was awarded a grant of US$30,000 (equivalent to $51,622 in 2023) by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to begin a tire removal program.

An original estimate of between $40 and $100 million (equivalent to about $68M and $169M in 2023) led the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to plan to arrange a deal with those companies whose construction damages the seabed and reefs.

CWO Donovan Motley said that the cleanup of Osborne Reef easily met those requirements: "This project allows these military divers and Army [Landing Craft Utility] crew members' real-world training in 'wartime' salvage ops.

[11] Beginning in June 2007, the United States military and Coast Guard began “DiveExEast 07" to ascertain the best and most efficient processes for the cleanup effort.

Barring unforeseen operational commitments and engagements, military divers hoped to use this project as a training platform for several years and "recover the maximum number of tires possible from day one.

That year, Florida spent approximately $140,000 (equivalent to about $198,000 in 2023) on the cleanup, some of which transported the tires to a shredding facility in neighboring Georgia, whereafter they were burnt as fuel at a paper mill.

In 2009, recovery began on July 24 with thirty Army and Navy divers at Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, where it was thought about 300,000 tires were caught against a natural reef.

[15] Wrapping up for the year in mid-August, Coastal America's William Nuckols told the Associated Press that cleanup efforts have thus far recovered approximately 73,000 tires from the reef.