Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.
Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.
Kevin Zelnio is a Graduate Student Researcher at Penn State studying the ecology of hydrothermal vent and methane seep communities. He raises awareness of the plight of the spineless through folk music.
Deep-sea oil platforms may aid sea life: study HOUSTON (Reuters) - Deep-water oil and natural gas platforms may become be as beneficial as a federal study has shown shipwrecks to be in creating habitats for undersea plants and animals, the U.S. Minerals Management Service said on Thursday. "The biological analyses conducted during this investigation concluded that as petroleum exploration and production expands into deeper Gulf water, platforms could potentially provide a habitat for marine life," Lars Herbst, acting MMS Gulf region director, said in a statement. Since offshore drilling began in the Gulf of Mexico after World War II, exploration has moved farther south from the U.S. coastline and into sea depths of thousands of feet.
Note the phrasing here could potentially provide a habitat for marine life. A debate ensued when artificial reefs became an excuse to litter the ocean with litter. Do artificial reefs increase fish prodution (i.e. increases in birth and/or growth rate) or do they merely concentrate available biomass (i.e pull individuals from other areas)? Largely the consensus has been that the latter, concentrating available biomass so it is not likely oil rigs are going to be a benefit to marine ecoystems.
Rapid colonization, high fish densities, and high catch rates at artificial reefs have been used as evidence for habitat-limitation and increased production of reef fishes. An alternative hypothesis is that artificial reefs attract fishes due to behavioral preferences but do not increase reef fish production or abundance. Reviewed literature reveals that except in one case evidence for increased production is mostly anecdotal and inadequate.From Grossman et al. 1997...
the literature contained few studies that unambiguously demonstrated that artificial reefs increased regional fish production rather than merely concentrated available biomass
