"And by the way, on that oil rig -- and I'm sure you've probably heard this story -- you look down, and there's fish everywhere! There's fish everywhere! Yeah, the fish love to be around those rigs. So not only can it be helpful for energy, it can be helpful for some pretty good meals as well."
-- John McCain, at a townhall meeting on Wednesday, explaining why oil rigs off of the Louisiana coast are beneficial and safe, despite the fact that at least three offshore oil rigs are missing and "presumed to be total losses" after Hurricane Ike
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Comments
View as Flat
wreckenhavoc Posted 4:35 pm
18 Sep 2008
Somebody more familiar with fish than I am - please, tell me if I should just stick to hugging trees and singing Italian opera to potted plants. Otherwise, I see this as a vacation opportunity just waiting to happen! Maybe I could work a deal with a cruise line and sponser green cruises to oil rigs where we could all read Shakespeare to the fish together.
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Bart Anderson Posted 1:30 am
19 Sep 2008
I think I read this in relation to the Valdez disaster. Does anybody else know more?
Doesn't mean that offshore drilling is a great idea or that it will solve our energy problem.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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Bob Wallace Posted 2:11 am
19 Sep 2008
Oil rigs provide a surface where stuff that fish eat can anchor.
But for McCain and his logic...
It's kind of like saying that a plane crash is a great thing as it creates a lot of cleanup jobs.
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vakibs Posted 2:30 am
19 Sep 2008
Or kind of like saying "A new republican administration will be a nice thing because their policies will only make oil pricier, and thereby stimulate interest in renewable energies".
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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redpanda Posted 3:46 am
19 Sep 2008
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Pangolin Posted 3:48 am
19 Sep 2008
We will have to learn to do without oil sooner or later. Drilling doesn't put the later date off by much at all. The huge oil fields have all been found and are largely depleted. New production won't fill the gap left by the loss of Cantarell or the North Sea oil fields.
Put the Carbon Back
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Sam Wells Posted 2:34 am
20 Sep 2008
It turns out that main source of NMFS data, aside from dock landings, are traps and trawls set up in the flat, not around the rigs. This biased the numbers very low. It's so bad there are several lawsuits and congressional bills over the Red Snapper War.
One thing everyone does recognize is that more bottom structure is needed to retain this wonderful fishery. I don't know about new rigs, but there's plenty of old ones that would make perfect fish attractor reefs.
But current laws require that decommissioned oil & gas rigs be pulled up and scrapped on the mainland.
This seems really strange, as some fishermen have noted that if the platform is in good shape, they could be used for wind turbines, wave machines, and tidal turbines. Hey, great idea close into the shore where the red snapper live [on the Continental Shelf].
The deepwater rigs are known as floaters and spars and are generally in water over 600 feet deep, anchored by huge cables several inches thick. These do attract pelagic fish such as tuna but are so far out the fishermen generally don't go there. This kind of floater design is what is envisioned by the "drill here drill now" crowd. Many have doubts about this strategy simply because of the high costs of deepwater drilling.
But I'd like to mention that as ugly as they may seem, most inshore rigs cannot be seen from land and are wonderful opportunities to actually save certain populations of marine life - even the southern spiny lobster. This is in addition to other uses such as alternative energy, Homeland Security, weather stations (excellent for hurricane research), and studies of how different coral species can actually flourish if given a stable environment. -sammie
Onward through the fog
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Pangolin Posted 5:48 pm
20 Sep 2008
Sanctuary zones are proven to improve fish catches when the zone is honored. Nobody is going to drop a net or a trap into a mess of old rig sections. It must be too easy to work.
Put the Carbon Back
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caniscandida Posted 6:35 pm
20 Sep 2008
Of course, even though many fish do indeed end up as meals, for human beings and many other animals, they are essentially far more than that. And we risk dehumanizing ourselves, if we fail to recognize that.
Thanks, Sammie, for your information and insight. It is well known that coral reefs provide remarkably biodiverse ecosystems, so it should not be surprising if other stable vertical structures on the ocean floor, even if they are man-made, should be similar in that regard.
There remains the possibility, though, that adding a man-made structure even in a thinly populated or not highly diverse area will be destructive of a previously existent ecosystem.
As for environmental damage caused by new drilling operations, that has been our general experience, hasn't it. I would like to believe the claim of the Chevron ad, that they know how to drill "intelligently, respectfully" now, requiring only a tiny "footprint," as Dick Cheney would assure us. Whatever the environmental effect may be of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, we certainly must continue to believe that drilling in ANWR would be a hideous disaster, even if the operation were smaller than what has already taken place on the North Slope of Alaska.
Anyway, we would be pathetic fools, if we were to believe the oil companies, and other advocates of drilling, when they claim they have the best interests of the environment in mind, when in fact they gleefully engage in the terrificly destructive extraction of oil from oil sands in Alberta, and are hoping to get a crack at oil shales in this country.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:16 am
21 Sep 2008
If they shred those huge fishing nets, that could be a good thing. No wonder they require shoreside dissassembley, are commercial fishing interests behind that? I wouldn't be surprised.
Imagine metal and concrete sticking up from the bottom that snags nets and rips them apart. Call them fish habitat, that is the purpose that fish cribs serve in lakes around here, they protect smaller fish from predators.
But these net ripping fish cribs would be so much more effective at protecting ocean life from the mega predator, corporate industrial fishing. That kills 20 times the fish it uses as food.
Leave commerical fishing to local family fishing businesses that are smaller and more careful to protect the fishery.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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