Readers React: Oil rigs and fish don’t mix

To the editor: According to Jonah Goldberg, defunct oil rigs are the savior fish have been waiting for. (“The good news about offshore oil rigs,” Op-Ed, Oct. 20)

While fossil fuel aficionados are free to offer such ringing endorsements of the oil-driven catastrophe unfolding around us, their arguments ring as hollow as a single-hulled tanker pierced on a reef. As a condition of these offshore rigs, oil companies committed themselves to their eventual removal. Instead, they want to call them reefs.

Well, allow me to present “Shopping Carts to Reefs,” where supermarkets toss old carts into the water, creating marine habitat. What about “Appliances to Reefs,” where people sink their old refrigerators into the ocean, creating fish flats and crab-condos, and make the jump to new energy-efficient models?

Sound ridiculous? It is. Remove the oil rigs.

Joey Racano, Los Osos

The writer is director of the Ocean Outfall Group.

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To the editor: Has it only been four years since the BP oil spill devastated the Gulf of Mexico? While sea life and coastal areas are still suffering from the effects of that spill, Goldberg trumpets the biodiversity created around offshore oil rigs.

As I read this, the only image that comes to my mind is Blinky, the three-eyed fish found in the polluted waters next to Mr. Burns’ nuclear plant in Springfield. Sadly, “The Simpsons” seems to grasp environmental reality better than Goldberg.

Lon Shapiro, Chatsworth

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