Unused oil rigs viewed as"highly productive marine environments"

"While not natural structures, their platforms have been embedded into the muddy seabed long enough to become part of the ocean environment, providing a home for creatures like mussels and barnacles, which in turn attract larger fish and sea lions that find safety and food there.

After two and a half decades of studying the rigs, Bull says it’s clear to her: “These places are extremely productive, both for commercial and recreational fisheries and for invertebrates.”..

Now, as California and the US shift away from offshore drilling and toward greener energy, a debate is mounting over their future. On one side are those who argue disused rigs are an environmental blight and should be removed entirely. On the other side are people, many of them scientists, who say we should embrace these accidental oases and that removing the structures is morally wrong. In other parts of the world, oil rigs have successfully become artificial reefs, in a policy known as rigs to reefs...

In 2010, the then governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, began allowing oil companies to turn their platforms into artificial reefs, then donate the cost saved by not having to remove the rigs entirely to a state conservation fund.

For Emily Hazelwood, a marine conservation biologist and offshore energy consultant who consults on rigs to reefs projects, the idea is win-win-win: “The state wins by getting an endowment, the environment wins because the reefs get to stay, and the oil and gas companies also win by saving money.”

But environmental groups don’t see a win. They cite the visual pollution of rigs on the ocean horizon and say that the plan lets fossil fuel companies escape paying for the end of life of their dirty products...

For Love, it simply feels wrong to remove something that’s home to millions of creatures. “It just pisses me off, the hypocrisy of environmental groups who say: yeah, we’re all for biodiversity, except on artificial stuff, and then they can all die,” he says. “It drives me insane.”

Photo cropped for size from the original at The Guardian.