Oil Platforms Are Shelters of Life

* On June 28 there was a cartoon in the opinion section that showed four items: a) a crab, b) a fish, c) a dolphin and d) a drilling rig/platform. The caption asked, “Which item does NOT belong here?” The expected answer is obviously the platform.

I think the caption should have said, “Which of these items can exist together?” And then there should have been one more answer: e) all of the above.

I have worked on platforms for much of my life and found them to be oases of life in the sea. A quick glance overboard at the pilings reveals colonies of mussels, starfish, crabs and fish. The platforms out in the Santa Barbara Channel or off Point Conception are probably the best whale-watching sites available. There was one very memorable occasion when we were visited by a pod of gray whales, a blue whale, a large group of dolphins, sea lions and a flock of big blackbirds all in one day.

This was in addition to the regular marine life that calls the platform environment home. The regulars are of course sea gulls and the sea lions that sleep on the mooring buoys off the platform and occasionally on the boat landing of the platform itself. One platform has a nesting pair of falcons that lives in the drilling rig and dines on sea gulls. The day-to-day activities do not seem to affect them in the least. The life that is generated and maintained by the platforms far exceeds the life that was taken in the oil spill of 1969.

But I would like to go deeper than that for just a moment. I think it is hypocritical for people to complain mightily about oil production when they use a vast amount of the product maintaining the highest standard of living on earth. We may legislate bans on oil production in the states but we cannot legislate away the fact that this country uses the most oil. We will still have to get it from somewhere. That means it will be produced in areas that may not have the environmental concerns we do.

But I guess it is OK if other people ruin their environments so we can live as we are accustomed to.

Just remember, there is one simple way of putting the hated oil companies out of business forever: Quit using their products.

TREVOR MAINGOT

Ventura