This time on Jonathan Bird’s Blue World, Jonathan explores the world beneath oil platforms!
Hi, I'm Jonathan Bird and welcome to my world!
For more than a hundred years, petroleum products have powered our world.
While more environmentally-friendly technologies like wind and solar are making gains,
oil is going to continue to provide most of our energy until newer technology makes it
obsolete.
One of the many environmental challenges with oil is getting it in the first place.
Vast deposits of petroleum are inconveniently located beneath the sea floor.
Accidents happen, and sometimes environmental disasters are the result.
But drilling for oil at sea does have one environmental benefit.
I’m heading to the Gulf of Mexico.
But this time I’m not going to be diving reefs or looking for whale sharks.
I’m boarding a dive boat in Freeport Texas, on a mission to dive an oil rig.
After a 6 hour run about 100 miles off shore, we reach a decommissioned rig known as High
Island 389.
Although this platform once produced natural gas, now its dormant and unused.
As a result, we can tie the boat to the rig and dive underneath!
As soon as we tie up, a large school of grunts comes over to give our boat a look.
JT the divemaster puts the ladder down and its time to get suited up.
Christine and I make our way down the line tied to the structure.
Underwater, the steel tubes that make up the structure of the platform don’t look like
metal at all.
They have become entirely encrusted with marine growth.
The entire structure is like a huge underwater jungle gym with a soft fuzzy coating.
I fire up my camera and move in for a closer look.
Every available square inch of surface area is festooned with life.
Sponges, coral, hydroids, bivalves and dozens of other encrusting species have made the
platform home.
It has become in fact a geometrically symmetrical artificial reef.
Like a more conventional coral reef, it has attracted fish as well.
Smaller fish hide in the nooks and crannies while larger fish come in looking for food.
The more I explore the marine life of High Island 389, the more I find.
A grouper is chilling out.
A frantic group of angelfish gorge themselves on abundant sponges.
They don’t seem to mind me at all.
The water here is more than 100 meters deep, so I can only see about the upper third of
the structure.
Still, the part I can see harbors an unfathomable amount of life.
Every square meter contains countless creatures going about their lives in their underwater
high rise apartment building.
After an hour of wandering around the structure, it’s time to head back to the boat.
I do a safety stop on the line for a couple minutes and then I can head up.
After the dive, the crew fills tanks and the captain moves the boat.
We’re heading a few miles to another platform.
Tying up to the platform without crashing into it is a delicate operation.
Unlike the last platform, this platform is still being used!
It’s really noisy, but it’s supposed to be a great dive!
We have received special permission to see how the marine life coexists with an active
platform.
I hit the water, and I’m met by a school of fish as I head over towards the structure.
If anything, this platform actually seems to have more fish around it than the last
one.
The pilings seem to have just as much growth as the decommissioned platform.
Because these large platforms are the only shallow water structures out here in the open
ocean, they are incredible marine life magnets.
Not only do fish love them, but so do divers, fishermen and conservationists.
When a platform is decommissioned, by law it must be removed by its owner within 5 years.
But a lot of people say that decommissioned platforms are better off left in place as
artificial reefs.
High Island 389 should have been taken down in 2013, but efforts to save the structure
as an artificial reef have given the platform a reprieve.
The oil and gas industry isn’t exactly known as being particularly friendly to the environment.
But it’s not all bad.
Oil platforms provide a structure to support magnificent offshore artificial reefs, creating
habitat where once there was none.
It just goes to show that things are not always what they appear at first, especially in the
Blue World!