You are looking at an explosion of life.
Large fish, sea lions and hundreds of species of invertebrates.
Scientists call this one of the most biologically productive places in the world.
And it’s all happening on oil rigs.
On the horizon they look like these menacing industrial structures.
You have no idea that below the surface there's so much more.
A whole entire ecosystem.
These oils rigs are in California, but there are thousands around the world like them.
When they stop producing, its up to the oil companies to remove them,
returning the the seabed to its original condition.
People in California don't look at these oil platforms as artificial reefs.
They look at them as oil spills waiting to happen.
But Emily and Amber think they should stay put, and be converted into artificial reefs.
The two women are an environmental scientists,
and run a for-profit consultancy called Blue Latitudes.
They’ve worked around the world for governments and companies
that range from Patagonia to Shell Oil,
advising on environmentally friendly ways to turn old rigs into reefs.
We are aware that repurposing an offshore oil and gas platform as an artificial reef,
that is a very controversial idea.
And so we're going to get some pushback.
There are going to be groups that feel that the structures
should be completely removed from the sea floor.
But instead, they advocate for capping the oil well,
and cutting off the top 85 feet of the rigs.
This is far cheaper than removing them completely,
maybe hundreds of millions of dollars cheaper,
It provides a potentially huge financial benefit to oil companies.
And it's part of the reason why they've paid Emily and Amber
to create a plan for turning rigs into reefs in other parts of the world.
But independent studies suggest keeping old rigs as reefs
helps the animals who live there.
It's an enormous amount of diversity, the animals that are on there.
When the platforms are pulled out of the water,
all that habitat, all those animals, they're all going to die.
That’s Dan Pondella, a scientist at Occidental College
and director of the Southern California Marine Institute.
He’s a co-author on an independent 2014 paper
that revealed how much life is on the rigs.
They increase the amount of fish and invertebrates in the region,
and the adults on those platforms actually produce young
which then settle to other parts of the Southern California bite.
In other words, the life on these rigs is spreading,
bringing back some of the diversity that the state has lost over the decades.
They function as a nursery habitat for a lot of fishes and invertebrates.
It was striking that it was so much more productive than other habitats.
Even coral reefs, for instance. And that was a real big surprise.
On a cool, clear November day, I came out
with them to dive on these massive structures
to see for myself the incredible amount of life that grows and thrives around them.
I could describe the amazing experience of diving on these reefs,
but Emily actually does a better job.
Diving on an oil platform is like diving on the scaffolding of the Empire State Building.
The beams and cross beams are all covered in life.
Anemones, scallops, sea lions fish.
There really isn't any part of the beam that is not covered in life.
The idea of converting oil rigs into reefs is not new.
A few countries like Malaysia and Brunei have been doing it,
and over 120 rigs in the gulf of Mexico have been converted into reefs.
But there are over 5,000 oil platforms in seas around the globe,
and for many, there is no precise plan
for what to do with them once they stop producing oil.
Whether reefing becomes more common around the world will depend
on the success of programs like the one here in California.
Emily and Amber insist the merits outweigh the drawbacks.
It's time to start looking for silver linings in our ecosystems,
areas where the ocean has been forgotten about,
areas where we've placed structures in the water
and never thought about them again.
Often, these areas are some of the most ecologically productive areas on planet.