Studies done in the waters around Louisiana (one of the places with the most oil rigs in the U.S.) showed that marine life doubled in the area since the oil rigs went operational. The reason for this is that pumping oil brings oxygen to deeper layers of the sea, and also warms up the water allowing for coral and fish populations to grow.
Quoted from forkparty.com
Could this be true? Do oil rigs actualy help fish populations in the oceans? There were no cites to actual scientific studies.
Speaking only from experience and knowledge I’ve gained while fishing recreationally in California, I wouldn’t doubt it one bit. Oil rigs are great spots for fish to hang out around because the pillars provide great ambush points to make hunting easier for predatory fish. Shade is another important factor as well.
This comes from the ‘Rigs-to-Reefs’ policy and program study by MMS.
“A 2000 MMS report says researchers proclaim fish densities 20 to 50 times higher around oil and gas platforms than in nearby open water.” (Wiki cite.)
ETA: There are many more references at the bottom of the Wiki article.
Same here from fishing around rigs south of AL. Fish like to hang out around any structure.
One of the most valuable resources a commercial sport fisherman has is his list of the locations of ‘reefs’ - both natural and artificial.
[quote=“moldybread, post:1, topic:538303”]
Studies done in the waters around Louisiana (one of the places with the most oil rigs in the U.S.) showed that marine life doubled in the area since the oil rigs went operational. The reason for this is that pumping oil brings oxygen to deeper layers of the sea, and also warms up the water allowing for coral and fish populations to grow.
QUOTE]
Ok, there have been a lot of studies on whether oil platforms and other kinds of structure just concentrate fish or whether they result in a higher total biomass of fish, and evidence leans toward the latter, at least for fishes which are structure-oriented.
But the REASONS for this in the above quote are completely wacko. Pumping oil does not “bring oxygen to deeper layers of the sea”, nor does it warm up the water in any substantial amount. Fish like to congregate around structure, for a variety of reasons. It breaks the current, creating current shadows where the fish don’t have to work as hard to stay put. For creatures that sit on the substrate, like many fishes and invertebrates, it gives them somewhere to sit. For fishes that eat things that like sit on substrate, it gives them something to eat. And oil platforms provide structure through entire water column, so animals that like to sit on substrate in shallow water can live there, where normally there would be only water. Corals are a good example of this, but there are many other examples. Corals do grow on the legs of oil platforms, if they are in a place where the corals can survive and where they can be colonized by coral larvae. Oil platforms create a complex substrate with many types of habitat, and where they are heavily colonized by marine organisms, that substrate complexity increases further. Increase habitat complexity, and you get more types of things that can live there, which means more kinds of food, and so on.
Oil platforms do have their undesirable effects too, oil spills that coat the gulf coast being only one of them. Oil platforms DO concentrate fish, which makes them both a good and bad thing - fishers can catch more fish (good) but fishers can thus do more damage to the fish population (bad). And there is oil field produced water, water that is pumped from the earth along with the oil, and which tends to be highly toxic because of dissoved constituents. This is dumped back into the sea/gulf/ocean. Usually, in this case the very high dilution rate of being dropped into such a large body of water mitigates the toxicity, but in cases where currents are low, or where the discharge is trapped as in a bay, or where the discharge is released at the bottom where it effects sediments before it is diluted (unusual, but it happens) you can get very high toxicity in the sediments.
[quote=“Carptracker, post:5, topic:538303”]
I’m not an expert on offshore operations, but I believe that the water produced can not simply be dumped back into the sea. I think at the very least it must be a certain quality. Again, I’m not an expert on that though, so I may be wrong. Onshore and in the marshy fresh waters, produced water must be reinjected via a disposal well.
[quote=“LonghornDave, post:6, topic:538303”]
This isn’t always true. In Colorado as long as the water meets certain quality requirements it can be placed into rivers. Of course recently they’ve had a problem with the water from coalbed being too pure and so they are either having to increase the mineral content or space out the slugs of produced water so as not to change the composition of the stream.
Evaporation is also allowed in certain areas where disposal wells aren’t possible but I haven’t seen that in action.
That is a rediculous explanation for a real effect. Anything solid in the ocean attracts marine life. There are whole ecosystems specific to life under mats of Sargasso weed in the open ocean. Fish congregate around oil rigs.
But to claim that the oil extraction changes the physical characteristics of the deep water is a whoosh. It isn’t a serious suggestion.
Just want to say that many countries deliberately sink "passed their sell by date"vessels, aircraft and sometimes even old military tanks as artificial reefs to transform sea bed deserts into areas with large amounts of sealife.
‘many countries’ includes the US - the Navy sunk the WWII carrier USS Oriskany a few years ago 25 miles offshore of Pensacola for just this purpose.
I’m not certain that there are no restrictions anywhere, but in the open waters of the Gulf, there is no required toxicity testing for release of produced water. You can just dump it. I’ve published on the toxicity of these waters myself, both onshore and offshore, so I’ve been around it a bit.
Correct. I was referring to the produced waters in the Texas and Louisiana region, which are usually toxic and often radioactive, to boot. Not all produced waters are highly toxic, and in Wyoming they are even used to water cattle (although the thought gives me the willies and makes me glad we eat mostly venison - that water has got to be loaded with PAH and probably sometimes with de-emulsifiers.)