| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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HABITATS From Rockfish to Rigfish
Jutting out from the choppy waters of the Pacific Ocean about three miles off the coast of Northern Ventura County in California, Nuevo Energy’s Platform Gina is a rusting mass of steel punctuated by blaring yellow guardrails and danger signs. Stacks of battered tires swallow the supporting pillars, forming a chunky black lattice relieved only by a peppering of barnacles and mussels near the water line. At the brink of a jarring juxtaposition, these shells barely hint at the life that teems below. Slipping beneath the waves, thick shafts of sunlight pass between the pillars, transforming the oil rig into a glowing blue cathedral. Its angular arches—the rig’s supporting arms—are softened by a pillowy pink coating of countless strawberry anemones. Half-buried in this living blanket, enormous rock scallops and starfishes stake out their terrain, and spindly spider crabs sidestep the bright orange nudibranchs in their paths. Out in the congregation, up to 35 species of rockfishes gaze blankly at the scene, enlivened occasionally by a swooping sea lion. Like Platform Gina, 27 oil rigs along this coast have gradually developed into artificial reefs over the past 20 to 40 years, and each one is now home to millions of sea creatures. Everything from barnacles to bocaccio—a species of rockfish that may soon make the endangered species list—grows bigger on and around the rigs than on natural reefs, since the colder offshore currents bring by more nutrients. Besides the bocaccio, four more dwindling rockfish species found near the rigs have been declared overfished by the National Marine Fisheries Institute. The fish have found sanctuary around the rigs, since safety zones, enforced by both the Coast Guard and common sense, prevent trawlers and sportfishermen alike from getting too close to the steel structures. Rockfishes and their rig neighbors have also found an advocate in Milton Love, the self-proclaimed “hotshot marine biologist” from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Love, who has dedicated the past six years to studying the relationship between California’s rigs and rockfishes, has just finished writing The Rockfishes of the Northeast Pacific, to be published by University of California Press next spring. Love and his team have found that rockfishes tend to aggregate in three main groups around a rig. Yearlings cluster between 100 to 450 feet deep, using the pillars as a protective nursery; adults lurk near the base of the structure; and two- to four-year-old juveniles are relegated to the surrounding shell mounds that have accumulated on the sandy bottom as mussels have been knocked loose from the pillars over the years. True to their name, rockfishes spend most of their lives around rocky reefs, where they find shadowy hideouts and abundant food. Like rocky outcrops, the rigs and their surrounding shell mounds provide the hard attachment surfaces necessary for a vibrant reef to develop, creating additional rockfish habitat where only sand existed before. In addition to attracting rockfishes from neighboring reefs, Love proposes that California’s rigs may actually increase the regional population of threatened species by providing additional nurseries in protected areas. Because the rigs cover a vast vertical span of up to 1,200 feet, they are relatively easy for fish to find. Although most rockfishes give birth to live young near the coast, small yearlings often get caught in currents and carried out to die in the deep sea. The rigs, which are usually between one to three miles off shore, can intercept the fish on this route and provide a protected nursery. Meanwhile, adults that find the rigs can escape the fate of a trawler’s net long enough to reproduce for another year. However, not everyone agrees that the rigs increase the local population of rockfishes—an issue that lies at the heart of the debate surrounding the Rigs to Reefs bill (Senate Bill 1) currently in the California State legislature. The bill, sponsored by Senator Dede Alpert (D-San Diego), would relieve the oil companies of their current legal obligation to remove the rigs once they’re done drilling by allowing them to donate the structures to the state as artificial reefs. By evading their original promise to pack out their equipment, the oil companies would save an estimated $50 to $200 million per rig in cleanup costs. In return, they would contribute about half of their saved expenses to state endowment funds for reef maintenance, research, and marine preservation. However, the new legislation would not relieve oil companies of liablity for injuries or accidents on the rigs. Those who support the bill, including the oil companies and most sportfishermen, believe it offers a win-win solution. The upper-platform eyesores that currently shield the underwater sanctuaries from lines and nets would be towed away, but threatened rockfishes would continue to find protection there in the form of “no take” zones, enforced with funding from the oil company endowments. Most local sportfishermen believe that larger and more plentiful rockfishes would spill out from the protected rigs into surrounding waters, helping them maintain their operations. Meanwhile, the oil companies would simultaneously improve their bottom line and their public image. And the state would receive cash to fund important marine research and preservation projects. Those who oppose the bill, including most major environmental organizations and the trawlers whose routes are interrupted by rigs, say that the legislation is premature since there is no conclusive scientific evidence that the rigs increase rockfish populations. Groups such as Southern California’s Environmental Defense Center and the Sierra Club point to a report published by six University of California scientists in November 2000, which states that any productivity assessment of the rigs “seems hopelessly complicated and highly uncertain” due to the wide variety of rig locations and fish species in question. This report, commissioned by Senator Alpert, was based on a comprehensive review of the available literature—no new research was conducted. Although the authors were unable to conclude definitively that the rigs increased rockfish populations, they were also unable to report the opposite. They did conclude that the rigs have created additional subpopulations of several threatened rockfishes—distinct communities that could cushion those species from the risk of extinction. Additionally, coauthor Mark Carr, a marine biology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, points out that “although the rigs contribute a small proportion of California’s overall reef habitat, they also contribute unique habitat because of their high vertical structure. Some of these platforms support threatened rockfishes, and losses to those species [caused by removing the rigs] may be harmful to the regional ecosystem.” Still, Sarah Fangman, the research coordinator for the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, questions how useful the rigs can be as artificial reefs. With the possible exception of rock scallops, most of the organisms attached to them are not in short supply. And unlike the sandy Gulf of Mexico, where a “rigs to reefs” program has already been put in place, the California coastline already contains many natural reefs. Fangman argues that protecting these natural reefs with “no-take” zones would better serve the coastal ecosystem than protecting the decommissioned oil rigs. But getting funding to lobby for and enforce “no-take” zones around natural reefs has been difficult at best—a problem that could potentially be alleviated with cash from the proposed endowment funds in Senate Bill 1. However, “Rigs to Reefs” opponents voice concerns about the economic viability of the plan. They fear that maintenance costs could eat up most of the proposed endowment funds, since the buoys that mark the hazardous rigs—which cost about $500,000 each—have been known to float away. Under Senate Bill 1, once the lower sections of the rigs are donated to the state as reefs, the state would assume the maintenance cost of marking the underwater hazard. In addition to the cost of keeping marker buoys on a tight leash, trawlers like Gordon Cota in Santa Barbara worry about the safety hazards that would float in if a buoy drifted off. Any accidents involving an unmoored buoy would invariably lead to lawsuits which, opponents believe, could gut the bill’s endowment fund in one fell swoop. They claim that the state will have trouble enforcing the indemnification clause that clears it of liability. Those who refer to Senate Bill 1 as the “Rigs to Rubbish Bill” provide many reasons for their opposition, but the passion in their voices peaks when they mention the promise the oil companies made to clean up their trash once their dirty work was done. They see the platforms as piles of pollution that set a destructive precedent for the disposal of other foreign objects, such as tankers and old subway cars. The rush to turn trash into marine treasure already seems to have begun. Earlier this year, the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority proposed sinking 1,300 decommissioned subway cars off the sandy barrens of the Mid-Atlantic coast to create artificial reefs. But the green lobby harbors yet another reason to protest the creation of artificial reefs. After all of their hard-fought (and rarely won) battles with the oil companies, says Environmental Defense Center lawyer Eric Cardenas, environmentalists are bitter at the prospect of corporate giants wriggling off this hook. Love has suggested that opponents of the bill care more about hurting the oil companies than helping fish. He says that while fielding questions about his research after a recent conference, an outraged member of the nonprofit Get Oil Out! organization shouted, “I don’t care how many animals it kills. I want those things taken out!” He did give her credit for maintaining a cohesive point of view. Love says that, unlike his opponents, he does care about the marine animals that would be killed if the rigs were destroyed. He believes that, regardless of their productivity, it would be immoral to pull out the vibrant pink pillars and hang the millions of marine organisms attached to them out to dry. Of course, like all of the other voices who have weighed in on this issue, Love also has a set of personal relationships and experiences that may color his opinion. When confronted with Love’s views, trawler Gordon Cota snorted, “Where do you think Dr. Love gets his funding?” For the past few years, Love’s research—the only long-term research of its kind—has been funded by the United States Geological Survey as well as CARE, a nonprofit organization established by Chevron. Stephanie Greenman is a science writer living in the Bay Area. |
