Going to Great Depths : Anglers Work to Turn Oil Rigs Into Reefs Because of Abundance of Sea Life Clinging to Them

The foot-long rockfish, reddish-brown with bulging black eyes, swam up to the bubble-blowing intruder and, face to face, shot him what seemed an angry glare.

The diver flinched and the fish was gone, having darted into the safety of the reef.

David O. Brown, and two associates from the underwater documentary team of the Santa Barbara-based Passage Productions, continued their narrated dive, the purpose of which was to show off the abundance of life at the foot of an oil platform called Hazel.

Hazel, a mile or so off the Santa Barbara coast, is one of four rigs built by Chevron in the 1950s that, having lost productivity, must come down. The dozens of other rigs off the California coast will someday face a similar fate.

That is, unless a group of concerned fishermen have their way.

The United Anglers of Southern California, supported by scientists and biologists and, in theory if not officially, some state agencies, including the Department of Fish and Game, is trying to start a rigs-to-reefs program similar to that already in place in the Gulf of Mexico.

There’s no arguing that the structures beneath the platforms are rich in sea life.

On a recent dive at Hazel, Brown and his partners, diving from Santa Barbara Sea Landing’s Condor, beamed a live telecast to the scientists, biologists and government officials gathered on deck. Many of them are or will become involved in the program--if indeed it gets under way.

After the bug-eyed rockfish left Brown in its bubbles, he turned his camera to the bottom of the sprawling structure, which was covered with brilliant, white anemones reaching out and flowing beautifully in the swift, cool currents.

“If you think about it, and look at it, an anemone is really an upside-down jellyfish attached to the bottom,” said Brown, a former diver with Jacques Cousteau’s team. “Their tentacles have stinging cells that actually harpoon their prey and reel the prey in where the mouth absorbs it.”

Brown, wearing gloves, touched one of the anemones and it quickly withdrew its tentacles, taking on the appearance of a short, rubbery white tube.

The divers then worked their way up to about 60 feet. Another type of anemone, brilliantly colored in various shades of red, orange and white, flourished on the superstructure. Barnacles and rock scallops were thick on the pilings.

“Things tend to pile on top of themselves on any type of a reef, and this is of course a reef that we’re looking at--an artificial reef but a reef nonetheless,” Brown said.

He plucked a crab from one of the pilings, released it and it used all eight legs to scamper into hiding.

Sea stars, cucumbers, urchins, and a strange species of animal called stinging hydroids, which look more like plants, smothered the structure. Brown stuck a hand in the middle of the flowing plant-like animals and said, “If I didn’t have gloves on, I would not want to do this, because I’d get a little rash that would last for about 30 minutes or so.”

A large kelp bass, camouflaged almost beyond recognition, spied on Brown and remained still until Brown reached out to the fish, which quickly darted out of sight. Mussels were piled in bunches on the pilings.

Brown plucked a large sea star, or starfish, and its long arm-like tentacles probed about for something to grab. The animals feed on mussels and must think they are in heaven on these mussel-laden rigs.

“As reefs, they provide habitat, structure onto which things can attach,” Brown said of the oil rigs. “A lot of things you see here wouldn’t exist, were there not some structure for them to grab onto.”

The divers ascended to 31 feet and the visibility improved dramatically. A huge school of sardines passed overhead, the small fish moving in unison in the currents. The superstructure of the rig was more visible, in the white light of a sun-lit sea.

Kelp bass, opaleye and yet another species of anemone, the green anemone, which actually uses photosynthesis, thrive at that depth. Brown, who along with Condor owner Fred Benko is running similar tours of the rigs on Wednesday nights through October, said larger game fish such as barracuda and yellowtail, and sometimes sharks, frequent the structure as well.

Milton Love, a research associate at UC Santa Barbara’s Marine Research Institute, said the rigs are ideal places to fish, but are also important as nurseries.

“These rigs will have between 10,000 and 20,000 fish on them, you just can’t see them all,” he said. “There will be adults and juveniles. But as far as larval fishes are concerned, if the (rigs) hadn’t been here, they wouldn’t have survived.”

And for the rigs to stay, at least the lower halves, it’s going to take something just short of a miracle.

The agreement with the oil companies when the rigs went up was that they would be completely removed when their usefulness ended. United Anglers, however, would like to see them cut off well below the surface--so as to remove any navigational hazards--and use the upper halves to build and study artificial reefs in the Big Sycamore Canyon area, a mostly barren marine reserve near Point Mugu.

Daniel Frumkes, chairman of the United Anglers’ Marine Resources Protection Act Committee, is spearheading the project and has suggested that Chevron donate not only the tops of the rigs for this part of the project but any savings it might realize by not having to remove the lower portions.

“We want the materials rerouted to the reserve and adjacent to the reserve,” Frumkes said. “We’re talking about building seven reefs in the reserve, and three outside it that can be fished.”

The lower halves of the oil platforms would remain where they are and be augmented with other materials to provide divers and fishermen added opportunities.

Chevron, however, has not committed to donating any potential savings to the marine reserve project and has other reservations about the rigs-to-reefs project. Its abandonment plan has long been drawn and deadlines with the companies doing the dismantling have already been set. The four non-productive rigs--Hazel, Heidi, Hope and Hilda--are scheduled to come down in about a year.

Moreover, Chevron said, even if it were going to alter its schedule, there are other criteria to be met, notably the transfer of title, which would make Chevron free of liability and other responsibilities.

“This project has to be someone else’s, not ours,” said Lee Bafalon, senior land representative for Chevron. “And we will not go through the environmental review or permit process. . . . Someone else would have to be the (permit) applicant.”

Dave Parker, marine resources supervisor for the DFG, said the department might become such an applicant, but has yet to officially take a position on the project.

“We’re supportive of the concept, anyway,” Parker said.

But until the state takes an official position, Chevron will proceed as scheduled.

“If they can really get their act together and get the government to step in and ask us or request that we deviate from our schedule, then we’ll talk,” Bafalon said. “But that’s going to take some work.”

In United Anglers’ favor is its history at getting things done quickly and against heavy odds. The group in 1990 spearheaded the drive to pass the controversial Proposition 132, which banned the use of gill nets in state waters, sponsored legislation to restore the depleted white sea bass fishery in California and has coordinated efforts to build grow-out pens from San Diego to Santa Barbara.

It also has helped build artificial reefs and thus has worked extensively with the California Coastal Commission, the DFG and other agencies that play roles in the cumbersome permitting process. In a meeting several weeks ago, United Anglers brought all of these groups together and afterward nobody was saying a rigs-to-reefs program was impossible.

But nobody was saying it would be easy, either.