HMCS Saskatchewan, which belonged to the Mackenzie class of destroyer escorts, was sunk near Nanaimo in British Columbia, Canada, on June 14, 1997, to form an artificial reef. Divers investigating the artificial reef during the first 448 days after the sinking found 46 different types of flora and fauna, including 9 molluscs and 7 echinoderms, which marks one of the earliest records of colonization by marine life of this man-made reef. In this case, the speed of colonization is similar to other projects of the Artificial Reef Society of British Columbia (ARSBC): for example, in the case of G.B. Church, the first of the ARSBC's artificial reefs, sunk in 1991, surveys carried out within two and a half years of sinking recorded 96 species (62 invertebrates, 20 fish, and 14 algae) and in the case of HMCS Annapolis, which sank in 2015, almost twenty years after HMCS Saskatchewan, citizen-science surveys monitored recruitment over the course of a five-year investigation.
The Saskatchewan was part of the Royal Canadian Navy service for approximately thirty years and was decommissioned in 1994. After it was purchased by ARSBC, it was made non-hazardous, its hatches and doors opened for diving purposes, and it was sunk using the process that, according to the 1997 conference paper 'Artificial Reefs in British Columbia, Canada' by Jones and Welsford presented at OCEANS '97 MTS/IEEE in Halifax, NS, takes at least seven months, corresponding to approximately 75 person-months of volunteer time. Currently, the Saskatchewan rests upright at depths of 24 to 40 meters, becoming one of the most popular dive spots in British Columbia, according to local dive companies like Nanaimo Dive Outfitters.
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