ALA Booklist (Wed Jul 05 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

This picture book introduces the Mighty O, a decommissioned U.S. aircraft carrier that was purposefully sunk off the coast of Florida to create an artificial reef to help improve the surrounding ocean habitat. A combination of simple declarative sentences and sentence fragments describes the action in present tense, explaining how various types of ocean life need support, why a huge carrier makes a good substitution for a natural reef, and all the tasks that must be done to prepare the Mighty O for its new mission: severing cables and wires, and removing copper, fuel, oil, and paint. The ship is carefully sunk with explosives, ensuring that it ends up on the ocean floor upright, exactly situated to have the greatest impact. These preparations are minutely detailed in illustrations that show the multiple simultaneous actions taking place on board the Mighty O, effectively contrasting the calm underwater scenes as fish, urchins, mollusks, and other ocean critters take up residence. This unique title with generous back matter will appeal to environmentalists and big-boat enthusiasts alike.

Horn Book (Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

In 1976, after approximately twenty-five years of service, the massive aircraft carrier USS Oriskany was decommissioned. Rather than being sold or relegated to retirement, "chained to a pier. Rusted, empty, and without purpose," the "Mighty O" had a different future. Conservation scientists and Navy engineers converted it into an artificial reef, sinking it about twenty miles off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. The great strength of this account is that Stremer creates a dual focus. She first details the destruction of natural reefs and the benefits they provide for marine life. A full-bleed gouache and acrylic double-page spread shows the ocean floor teeming with life around a natural reef, contrasting with a subsequent reef-less scene devoid of fish and plants. Second, Stremer outlines the scientific planning involved in converting the massive ship into an artificial reef -- including stripping the ship of copper (and selling that to help pay for the reconstruction) and removing paint toxic to the ocean environment until the ship is "nothing more than a shell of its former self." Wright's striking art outlines the entire process of the Mighty O's makeover, as well as detailing a careful plan for sinking the ship in such a way that storms and tides would not alter its position. This clear, logical, and fascinating combination of natural and industrial science concludes with information about reefs and the Mighty O, a bibliography, and an index.

Kirkus Reviews

A tribute to a decommissioned warship turned to a better purpose.The aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, or "The Mighty O," saw action in the Korean and Vietnamese wars but rather than being scrapped at the end of its career, was scuttled off the Florida coast to serve as an artificial reef. It "remains the largest ship ever reefed," and a sense of its length and bulk comes through clearly in Wright's atmospherically lit, realistically detailed illustrations-some of which are full wordless spreads. Along with explaining in her spare account and one of several afterwords the importance of natural reefs as habitats and how they are endangered, Stremer highlights the painstaking efforts required to clear out the hulk, rid it of toxic substances, tow it to its final location, and control its sinking so that it comes to rest in a stable position. Amazingly, divers sent to inspect it only hours later found sea life already checking it out. Though Aimée M. Bissonette's Shipwreck Reefs (2021), illustrated by Adèle Leyris, provides glimpses of a variety of manufactured reefs and closer looks at what lives on them, here the author's quicker closing tally of marine residents gives the tale a properly triumphant finish. The groups of human workers appearing in a few scenes are racially diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)Recycling at its best. (select sources, tips for saving the reefs, index) (Informational picture book. 6-8)