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Oil Rigs to Reefs

From the “more complicated than you probably thought” file, I found this gem of an article about how marine ecosystems develop around artificial structures, such as oil rigs. When these rigs become obsolete, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act requires their removal within one year, yet almost everyone seems to agree that leaving them is in beneficial as well as more cost-effective. What people disagree on is exactly what to do with them:

Under the Rigs to Reefs program, the platforms are either towed elsewhere and sunk, tipped on their sides or cut down well below the water's surface so they would no longer be hazards to navigation.

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In the previous Congress, then-Rep. David Vitter (R-La.), now a senator, introduced a bill to authorize the use of obsolete oil platforms for culturing marine species, scientific research and as artificial reefs.

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The fate of the oil rigs has also attracted the attention of fishermen such as Dan Leonard, who raises clams at his Bull Bay Clam Farm, near here. He thinks the platforms could be the foundation for an offshore ocean farming business.

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For differing reasons, aquaculture farmers, biotechnology companies, fishermen, scientists and oil executives agree that a new life could await the rigs once they are no longer needed for drilling.

This particular article is about oil rigs off the Gulf Coast, but we’re facing the same issues in Southern California as well. I didn’t run across any timely local articles, but I did find something far more interesting – underwater photos from local rigs. I would love to have used one of these photos in this post, but the photographer seems to prefer that interested parties view the pictures on her site, so I encourage you to check 'em out.

Artificial reefs

By Hungry Hyaena (not verified) at May 19, 2005 - 4:20pm |

While the link to the article doesn't seem to work, I thought I would respond anyway. "The more complicated then you probably thought" file is always swelling, proving how adaptive and incredible life is but also making sound conservation less likely to embrace sweeping generalizations. While this shouldn't be a problem, the current political climate demands absolutes, not approaches suggesting "x" for this situation and "y" for that one. Such complexity doesn't bother me, but it can intimidate and, on a bad day, even discourage action.

At any rate, in the 1980s, my father's was among the media voices encouraging the government dumping of discarded tanks off the eastern coast of the United States. These tanks otherwise sat in empty lots gathering rust and taking up space. On the ocean floor, however, they became vectors of undersea life. I would love to dive down and photograph these abandoned war machines, now covered with life and providing refuge and habitat for so many fish species.

Thanks

By chris at May 19, 2005 - 8:33pm |

Thanks for the head's up on the article - it should be working now.