ABOARD THE M/V FLING (1 July 2003) -- The scuba divers felt as if they had fallen onto a Caribbean coral reef about 100 miles off the Louisiana-Texas border. Above the surface, the hulking platform of West Cameron 643A stretched its massive legs like a steel giant over the liquid landscape of the northern Gulf of Mexico. But just below the waves, what looked like a mirage appeared out of the murky depths: tropical fish, colorful coral, bulbous orange sponges and feathery hydroids slowly came into focus on the struts of the oil platform. A 4-foot silky shark slipped around a coral head, while a brown-speckled blenny fish bobbed up and down like a living jack-in-the-box, retreating into its barnacle home at first sight of divers. Nearby, a pastel parrotfish nibbled on a knob of blue-gray brain coral with the relish of a child enjoying an ice cream cone. Standing in more than 350 feet of water, West Cameron 643A, and possibly hundreds of other oil and gas rigs like it, have provided a toehold for hard corals, the tiny animals whose calcium-carbonate skeletons provide the ribs of the world's reefs and in turn provide habitat for marine life of all shapes and sizes. Now a local scientist who has been studying these delicate organisms growing on such structures is raising questions and concerns about the anticipated destruction of the critters' manmade homes. His work has shed light on a previously unexplored conflict between two federal regulations, one that protects such coral from harvest and another that requires platforms, some with coral colonies, to be yanked from the Gulf once their drilling leases are terminated. With the federal regulations butting heads and the future of hundreds of artificial reefs and fish habitats at stake, Congress may soon be asked to settle the legal quagmire. U.S. Rep. David Vitter, R-Metairie, introduced legislation late Thursday that could dramatically alter the fate of decommissioned oil and gas platforms, and that he said could open the door to new aquaculture and mariculture industries in the Gulf of Mexico. It's an issue some environmental groups are also watching, with some fearing these artificial ecosystems could have a negative long-term impact on the Gulf of Mexico. Artificial coral islands The smile blossomed beneath Paul Sammarco's bushy brown mustache as soon as his dive regulator popped out of his mouth. Still in his dripping wet suit, Sammarco, a scientist with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium in Chauvin, couldn't wait to see what his teams of volunteer scuba divers had collected from West Cameron 643A, a platform owned by Chevron-Texaco. Working aboard the M/V Fling, a 100-foot dive charter boat from Freeport, Texas, the group of scientists and divers led by Sammarco and Louisiana State University graduate student Amy Atchison spent a week earlier this month hopscotching around oil and gas structures to collect samples of the DNA of certain coral species, photograph the colonies and retrieve racks Sammarco had installed two years ago to examine coral larval growth. The three-year study is being financed with $330,000 from the U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service, which regulates oil and gas drilling in the Gulf. The idea for the study came about after divers spotted a small colony of brain coral in 1990 on High Island 389, a now-famous platform within the boundaries of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, a natural coral reef built on shallow salt domes about 110 miles off of Galveston, Texas, said Greg Boland, an MMS fisheries biologist who is working with Sammarco and was aboard the Fling for the latest research dive trip. Sammarco's first task was to determine whether hard corals were an anomaly on the platforms. Fish, invertebrates, some soft corals and other marine life are common inhabitants of offshore structures in the Gulf, but hard corals had been considered rare outside of natural reefs. Reef builders Reef-building corals require stable, warm temperatures, clear, clean water and plenty of sunlight. With the exception of the Flower Garden Banks, the north-central Gulf's mushy mud bottom, is, for the most part, too deep and its inshore temperatures too unstable to support hard coral. Two years into his study, Sammarco and Atchison have documented that coral colonies have taken root on several Gulf platforms, and now have turned their attention to analyzing the relationship between the most common coral species on the structures and the same types growing in the Flower Gardens. "Once these things start building reefs, they support all sorts of fish, too, and other things," Sammarco said. "That's pretty important from my perspective as an ecologist." Expanding range? Sammarco believes the platforms could be expanding the geographic range of hard coral in the northern Gulf, when previously they were found almost exclusively in the Flower Garden Banks. "Before the platforms, coral had precious few sites to settle on" in the northern Gulf, Sammarco said. "I think that's important to point out at a time when coral reefs all over the world are on a serious decline." With that in mind, Sammarco, who has studied coral all over the world, including on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, has begun raising questions about the fate of these artificial coral islands. Today there are 4,050 oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Of those, about 300 could likely support hard coral, Boland said. The other Gulf structures are probably too new or too close to shore in water not suited for such delicate organisms. Since the beginning of the study, Sammarco has surveyed coral growth on 11 platforms near the Flower Gardens. On the June dive trip, his teams used tiny chisels and hammers to nick chunks of coral from several structures. He and Atchison will use the specimens in DNA comparisons with coral from the same species growing in the sanctuary. Structure removal While the coral may find the platforms in the deep blue water near the continental shelf to their liking, some of those structures may not have a long future. As the Gulf's oil fields mature, the number of aging platforms being decommissioned and removed has accelerated and now almost keeps pace with new structures being installed, according to MMS records. As part of its oil and gas lease agreements, MMS requires operators to remove platforms within one year of the termination of the lease, said Les Dauterive of MMS, who works with companies in the decommissioning process. In the removal, owners must sever all well conductors and pilings and clear the site of bottom obstructions, he said, adding that anything related to petrochemical production is removed from the site. The cost of such removal can range from $400,000 to $5 million, depending on many variables, such as the depth, size and location of the structure, said Ayana McIntosh-Lee, a Chevron-Texaco public affairs representative. Boland said the removal requirement stems from the "philosophy of returning the sea bed to the natural condition. It's essentially the idea that they put it back the way they found it." From 1990 to 1999, a total of 1,261 decommissioned structures were removed from the Gulf, while 1,428 were installed, according to MMS. "In 2002, we had a total of 92 installed (new platforms) and 99 removed," Dauterive said. "This year we're going to see a great number of them coming off." But Sammarco questions whether those structures being removed are home to a protected species. The federal Fisheries Management Plan for Coral and Coral Reefs of 1982 prohibits any harvest of hard corals except for scientific study, Boland said. The plan, however, doesn't specify whether it protects animals growing on natural or artificial reefs. Handful of colonies Boland said the amount of hard coral growing on the platforms is miniscule in comparison to the colonies on natural reefs, such as the Flower Gardens. | | "If you look at what we've seen so far, it's a handful of colonies," he said. "I can't see going to the director of MMS and saying let's change the policy on decommissioning based on saving a few fingers of coral." Relaxing on the ship's top deck at sunset after a long day diving, Sammarco, however, speculated about how these fledgling artificial reefs could develop if left untouched. "I predict that if you allow these things to stay, the steel will continue to corrode with time, and maybe 50 years to 100 to 200 years from now, all of the steel will corrode and you will have only coral, in effect a natural coral reef." Instead of removing the structures, Sammarco envisions future uses of the platforms beyond oil and gas production. He points to efforts in Japan to use similar structures to farm fish in the open ocean. "It's a matter of being creative," he said. "We could create all kinds of new jobs and new industries in the Gulf." Legislation may open door Sammarco's ideas mesh with legislation Vitter introduced Thursday in the House of Representatives. If passed, the bill would allow the Department of the Interior to authorize the use of decommissioned oil and gas platforms for the culture of marine organisms, for the growth of artificial reefs or for scientific study. Currently, oil and gas companies in the process of decommissioning a platform can apply to have their structures included in state-run artificial reef programs. From 1986, when it was created, to 2002, Louisiana's artificial reef program has turned 110 decommissioned platforms into artificial reefs off the state's coast, said Rick Kasprzak, artificial reef coordinator for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. "We sunk our first rig, South Marsh Island 146, in October 1987," he said, adding that last year 15 platforms were converted to reefs. Platforms included in the programs are pulled up and toppled in their current location, towed to designated artificial reef planning areas or partially removed by cutting the structure off at 85 feet below the water and placing the cut-off portion next the remaining structure, according to Dauterive's "Rigs to Reefs Policy, Progress and Perspective," a report to MMS on the programs. As part of the programs, companies are required to donate a portion of their cost savings for removal and disposal to the state, Kasprzak said. As a result, depending on the structure's location and depth, the program may not be an economically viable option for some companies, Dauterive said. Only about 8.5 percent of the platforms decommissioned in the Gulf have gone to rigs-to-reefs programs, he said. "Only 188 total platforms have been used for rigs-to-reefs," Dauterive said, adding that 2,230 structures were removed from the Gulf from the 1970s through 2002. Platforms that are close to shore or in shallow water don't cost as much to remove, tow to land and sell for scrap, Dauterive said. "Anything less than 100 feet of water, the ones that are close to shore, it may be cheaper for operators to bring them in," he said. The Louisiana program would like to get more platforms in depths of 100 feet or shallower, but "those are the ones that are a wash to the savings" the company sees from donating it versus towing in for dismantling, Kasprzak said. But Vitter's legislation could make it more attractive by providing tax credit incentives when platforms are used for artificial reefs or mariculture, he said. "It's pretty clear, these structures can be very productively used at their locations for artificial reef purposes and maybe even for industries that will develop aquaculture and mariculture," he said, adding that the idea for the legislation came about from "a bunch of brainstorming in my office and then we reached out to get expert opinion on how best to craft it." The legislation would limit the liability of operators who use the decommissioned structures for artificial reef or mariculture purposes, and it would allow operators interested in mariculture or artificial reef options to have some temporary relief from MMS' one-year requirement for removal, Vitter said. The bill also would instruct the Department of the Interior to study and report back to Congress how the "removal of offshore oil and gas platforms from the outer Continental Shelf would affect existing fish stocks and coral populations." "It makes all the sense in the world to develop a careful and environmentally sound way to transfer them from oil and gas production to other uses," Vitter said. Sammarco, who consulted with Vitter on the legislation, agreed. "I feel it is a step forward to helping protect those corals in the Gulf of Mexico," he said. Environmentalists watch While Sammarco points to the well-developed fish habitat around platforms as a plus, some environmental groups wonder just what long-term effects these artificial ecosystems will have on the natural environment in the Gulf. "My whole problem (with the use of artificial reefs) is that you make the argument that by creating an environment suitable for fish we have somehow improved on Mother Nature," said Cynthia Sarthou, executive director of the Gulf Restoration Network, a New Orleans-based nonprofit environmental watchdog group specifically concerned with issues facing the Gulf of Mexico. "I support the idea of these coral communities (on platforms), but I'm also concerned that we've gotten totally hooked on using these artificial structures to create artificial communities." Sarthou said she is particularly torn about the issue of abandoned platforms in the Gulf because often the methods used to remove them can be destructive to fish and marine life. "In some ways I'd rather see them left standing than to see them use explosives, which is common, to remove them," she said. Sarthou also questions the use of platforms for mariculture or aquaculture industries. If not managed properly, the industries could have a negative impact on natural fish populations, she said. "We already have a significant problem with nutrients in the Gulf. Are there going to be safeguards to ensure water quality?" she said, adding that fish farmed in the ocean could escape and "have a significant impact on wild species." "What if they develop viruses?" she said. "Aquaculturists have had horrible issues with pollution, and now they want to move it offshore, which loosens regulation and makes it harder to control." In addition to those issues, Jack Sobel, director of strategic conservation science and policy for the Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., questions whether artificial reefs on platforms exacerbate overfishing of certain species. "They (platforms) may add to fish production in some instances, but for those species that are overharvested they can make it that much easier for them to be overfished" because populations are concentrated in one spot, Sobel said. "For overfished species in heavily fished areas, the contribution of artificial reefs is at least questionable and may be negative," he said. "They're clearly not a natural environment. Do you want artificial ecosystems or natural ones?" With a potentially protected species and the new legislation now in the picture, decommissioning of platforms is bound to become a bigger issue, some scientists say. At the least, the legislation "probably will make more awareness that these structures are valuable for these things, such as artificial reefs and mariculture," Boland said. "It's going to promote more public awareness." |
