When an oil rig is decommissioned, fish see an opportunity for a new home. UCSB biologist, Milton Love, has led a research team conducting and exploring the potential for oil platforms to have a new life after their retirement, or “rigs to reefs.”
The coastal shelf of California is peppered with over 20 oil and gas platforms. The water columns of oil platforms harbor various sorts of rockfishes in the midwater with larger, and often adult, fishes congregating at the bottom. Not all species of fishes are found multiplying around the rigs, but most of the ones that do have commercial and recreational value.
“These are really just large reefs,” Love said. “And they’re filled not only with fishes but millions, hundreds of millions, probably billions of other animals, sea stars, sea anemones, mussels, and barnacles.”