While an emissions argument could be made here, negative impact on marine life is one that doesn't hold a lot of water. Even the BP spill was largely isolated and cleaned up after just three years.
“They are more productive than coral reefs, more productive than estuaries,” said Milton Love, a professor of marine biology at the University of California Santa Barbara. “It just turns out by chance that platforms have a lot of animals that are growing really quickly.”
Dr. Love, who has published research on marine life at
offshore drilling sites, said the location of these rigs — in marine-protected areas in a cold current that swoops down from British Columbia — have made them perfect habitats for fish and other sea life.
Scientists and divers have been aware of the abundant life here for years, but a
2014 paper that Dr. Love co-wrote, published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirmed what many experts had already suspected: that most of the life was actually created at the rig rather than having come from other parts of the ocean and settled around the massive concrete pylons.
“For some of these major economic species like the rockfishes, there’s no question that there are more of them out in Southern California waters because the platform is there,” Dr. Love said.
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“I think it’s time for us to step outside the box and think creatively about the resources we have,” said Amber Jackson, an oceanographer and conservation biologist who co-founded Blue Latitudes with Emily Callahan, a marine scientist. “To lose these ecosystems just because they are on an oil platform structure, I feel, is shortsighted.”
In my opinion, more structure creates more marine life. The oil is going to be consumed because we don't have a reliable full scale alternative. Think outside the box and consider the tremendous positive impact this will have on marine life. Humans building the structures for reefs and still supplying their energy needs until a reliable alternative can be sourced.
