Friday, October 7, 2011
Rigs to Reefs ?
One issue I've been pondering lately is the rigs to reef program.In short the program was started by the MMS or mineral management service . The program is designed to take offshore oil rigs that are no longer in use and decommission them allowing them to become artificial reefs. Reefs both natural and man made ones act as a shelter for marine life and contain a huge amount of biodiversity. The Gulf of Mexico naturally has very few reef systems or bottom structure except for a small region of naturally occurring salt domes. Much of the marine biomass that is seen in the gulf occurs around oil rig which have taken the place of natural reef. As some one who loves to fish and dive I've seen first hand the amount of life and diversity that exist around these rigs. However there is Of course a downside made painfully clear by the Bp disaster.While much of our marine life depends on these structures they are at the same time put at risk by them. There are many views on this issue some feel that while oil exploration in the gulf should come to an end the skeletons of the rigs should remain much like many other man made natural reefs. Others feel that this isn't good enough and that any structure in the gulf is unnatural . It is a strange situation on the one hand we are putting our cost at risk by drilling for oil on the other hand the gulf ecosystem would be totally different with out rig. Are decommissioned rigs ok? , can you have decommissioned rigs without the working rigs in the gulf? should we just let nature take its course and have no artifical reefs?
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I think that the sad fact is, the rigs are there whether we like it or not, for now they are already there, why not get some good out of them? Besides when the rig has done it's job and becomes decommissioned, it's not as though they haul it away to be recycled into rebar for housing in underdeveloped countries, they are simply tipped over so that they sit on the ocean floor rather than upright where the ecosystem can benefit. It's really just a giant form of littering, which could be transformed into something productive. Though I look forward to a time when oil rigs are no longer a blight on our horizon, but even when that day comes, the skeletons will be left and so will the question of what to do with the leftover platforms. I don't see why the dark cloud of the oil era can't leave a silver lining of biodiversity.
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