A grand piano has mysteriously appeared on a sandbar in the middle of Miami's Biscayne Bay. It's been there for a week and no prankster or PR wonk has yet to claim credit. The Coast Guard says they have no plan to remove it and that with the next big storm, the piano will likely join hundreds of boats as just another sunken habitat for bay creatures.

I've suspected this for some time, and I'm glad to have the Coast Guard confirm it. Trash is good for fish. Where we see rusty old refuse, they see luxury condos.

Being altruistic, we Americans have been providing fish with housing for quite some time. That's how the Navy gets rid of old boats, including the USS Arthur W. Radford and the USNS General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, both of which are bigger than football fields.

Here in New York, we dump our old subway cars into the ocean. They turn into artificial reefs, the city is spared a lot of work, and dozens of homeless fish get housed. (I'm not real clear on exactly why fishes need housing, since they don't seem to own a lot of stuff.)

You might feel guilty ditching your old crap in that clear lake, but it's like a Christmas for crustaceans when they see human detritus hurtling toward them. See, life underwater is the opposite of life on land. Here, if you abandoned your car, the police would drag it off. It'd be dangerous. It'd be an eyesore! When you dump it into the ocean, though, it magically transforms into a fabulous home for fish. Within days that rusty old wreck has turned into some bream's bachelor pad.

Working on this theory, I've been tossing all my old trash into the sea. Empty soda cans will make great new shells for hermit crabs, I think. I toss in all my old clothes, because there's gotta be fish that build nests. I fling in old newspapers and magazines, because if dolphins are all that smart, they'll probably want to read. I know whenever I fling a car battery in the water, some sardine will get a charge out of it.

Still, I wish I could offer something like this piano. I know the fish are going to love it. I mean, you might imagine it'd turn into a dangerous mass of broken wood and rusty wire, but I'm picturing a barnacle-covered piano bar and a dozen gay crustaceans singing, "Under the Sea."