Rigs-to-Reefs
Rigs-to-Reefs An Overview |
This slide shows the deck of a small production platform being removed during decommmissioning. Before decommissioning, this deck was home to wellheads, production equipment, and a quarters building...a fixed offshore production plant as well as a home to the rig workers. (Photo: Aly Hakem) |
This slide shows the platform structure...what we engineers call the "jacket." It is composed of structural steel tubulars, and pinned to the seafloor with piles. In this photo, the piles have been removed and the jacket is being set on a cargo barge for transport to shore. (Photo: Aly Hakem) |
The following three photos were taken by amateur underwater photographers and submitted to the Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine photography contest. They do a good job showing what the Parks and Wildlife division calls "Islands of Life." In some cases, offshore platforms may be the only hard substrate within miles, and they recruit an incredible diversity of organisms. |
This is the contest winner, btw. |
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I clipped these out of an Offshore Technology Conference paper. The citation is at the bottom. These two bar charts give a pretty good idea of how the organisms are distributed on an offshore platform. It's not a long stretch to conclude that the different parts of the jacket: upper, middle, and foundation serve as separate and discrete reef zones. |
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Copyright 1998, James Wiseman. All rights reserved. These materials may be reproduced
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E-mail jwiseman@uclink.berkeley.edu