Comment They did this in the Pacific as well (Score 4, Informative) 74
It is a little odd for the headline to call this "storage" when it was clearly dumping with no intent to ever recover the waste.
They did the same thing in the Pacific of the Farralon islands just outside of San Francisco bay and the Golden Gate. 47,600 barrels were dumped off of ships in about 540 square miles between 1946 and 1970. In addition, the USS Independence (CVL-22), a WWII carrier that was severely contaminated by the Bikini hydrogen bomb test was scuttled there in 1951. I recall at the time when the barrel dumping came out that some calculations had revealed that the barrels would be falling through the water fast enough to rupture when they hit the ocean floor.
It is kind of sickening how cavalier people were with all kinds of industrial waste before the late 60s early 70s. There really was no concern for any damage to nature or long term effects. The effects of this carelessness and willing pollution will be with us for many decades.