The US Coast Guard today designated a 110-yard section of Gravesend Bay near the Brooklyn side of the Verrazano-Narrow Bridge temporarily off-limits to boaters and divers.
The “Temporary Safety Zone” designation is in response to the Post’s bombshell revelation in October that commercial divers had discovered roughly 1,500 World War II-era artillery shells in the murky waters off the former Fort Lafayette – an island near Bay Ridge destroyed in 1960 to pave way for the bridge.
The Coast Guard said the zone is expected to last until at least the end of June – or until the munitions are deemed safe and removed from the area.
Although the Coast Guard says it’s unclear how the shells got there, Brooklyn’s Gene Ritter and his diving team believe the ammo came from a stockpile of 14,470 live rounds that splashed into the bay during a military accident on March 4, 1954.
The aircraft carrier USS Bennington, moored off the fort, had unloaded the firepower onto a barge, which broke free during a storm, overturned and drifted six miles to the Rockaways — littering the muddy sea floor with live ammo along the way.
The Navy has disavowed knowledge of the shells’ origins – and previously claimed in 2008 that all but 10 of the shells lost by the Bennington had been recovered.