Ocean legend Sylvia Earle says keep oil rigs as reefs

When an offshore oil platform reaches the end of its production life, it is typically pulled from the depths and hauled off — a process that can cost tens of millions of dollars.

A less costly choice for the environment and the oil industry, says oceanographer legend Sylvia Earle, is to cut the top off the rig and let the legs remain a haven for the bustling marine ecosystem.

Earle, who set the solo diving record at 3,300 feet and has spent more than 6,000 hours underwater, is the headline speaker at the recent Rigs to Reefs Conference in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Scientists, activists and regulators discussed how to balance a healthy marine environment with decommissioned offshore oil and gas platforms.

Earle does not condone establishing oil rigs, but once they are there she believes partial removal is the best option for the environment.

Starting as early as 2015, some of California's 27 oil rigs may begin their decommission process.

Question: When it is possible, why is partial removal of an oil rig better for the marine environment?

Answer: There are some who would like to see the oil rigs removed right down to the ground once their job is done, and there are others, and I count myself among them, who think that once they are in place they begin to be adopted by life in the ocean as a habitat. Some creatures grow on the structures or find shelter among the pilings and under the platform itself. To subsequently remove them can be really traumatic for the organisms who have set up housekeeping there. Like a shipwreck or a jetty, almost anything that forms a structure in the ocean, whether it is natural or artificial over time, collects life.

Some of these rigs that have been established are 30 years old or more, and in my view it is more disruptive to extract them.

Now, would I put the structures there in the first place? That's a different issue altogether.

When you put something in the ocean, whether again it's piling or an oil rig, you are displacing things. There is no such thing as a harmless event.

It's not my ideal kind of fish haven. I'd much rather have a natural piece of ocean set aside deliberately where fish are safe. The rigs are an incidental, unintentional haven, but it is the one reason why it's hard to condone the extraction of them once they have become established.