Disposing of tires in the ocean is creating new habitat. Nothing is living in these tires! This 3 million tire “reef” is off Fort Lauderdale, but there are many more, basically wherever cars are used and refuse is dumped: NE US coast, Gulf of Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, and Africa. Each person, on average, contributes 1 tire per year to the heap.
Creating products that are not recycled is no way to run a planet. At first they were burned. Desperation has led to a low energy pyroletic process that recycles the rubber portion of the tires. But …
How do they recover all these tires from the ocean? Got a scuba tank? It is fairly easy to do- place them on a cable, float them to the surface, and haul them aboard a ship with a winch. But it is easier to dump, than it is to undump, and there are miles and miles of these.
Meanwhile we are creating untold amts of electronic refuse, and radioactive waste. Some of this has also found its way into the oceans. We could employ lots of people to retrieve this junk.