Millions of sea creatures lived on the Elly platform: Will they survive the oil spill?

Perched excessive above the waves about 9 miles off the coast of Huntington Seaside, the oil processing platform often known as Elly seems like an industrial eyesore — a tangle of arduous steel surfaces, cranes and pipes.

However plunge 30 toes beneath the waves, and also you enter a psychedelic wonderland of undulating marine life. Mussels, anemones and brittle stars coat the platform’s thick metal pilings, sea lions frolic between its beams and tens of hundreds of fish dart between its helps. Neon nudibranchs (small sea slugs) wander among the many different life. Sponges, scallops and corals are all a part of the combination.

No marvel the Elly platform is without doubt one of the most beloved dive websites in Southern California.

“It’s my No. 1 favourite dive,” stated Paige Zhang, a graduate scholar in marine biology at UCLA who spent a day diving Elly just some weeks in the past. “And that’s why I used to be so shocked and unhappy about this spill. It’s so loopy to assume that this occurred on one thing I dove earlier than.”

Particulars concerning the scope of the current oil spill in Orange County are nonetheless murky, however officers say as a lot as 144,000 gallons of crude oil leaked from a 17.7-mile pipeline that runs from the Elly platform to the Port of Lengthy Seaside. Precisely the place and the way this leak occurred remains to be being decided.

Scientists and environmental teams rushed to guard the varied animal populations within the area’s marshes and wetlands — deploying booms to maintain oil from flooding and rescuing birds who’re already exhibiting apparent indicators of oil harm.

As of now, no one is aware of for certain how the oil spill will have an effect on the plentiful marine life dwelling on the rig itself.

Oil is lighter than water, so the excellent news for these creatures, who stay tens and a whole lot of toes beneath the waves, is that the overwhelming majority of it has in all probability risen to the floor. However there’s dangerous information too: Even hint quantities of oil might be lethal.

“I don’t know if the platform itself or all of the organisms which have connected to it have been coated with oil, however we all know that even small concentrations of oil within the water can have poisonous results,” stated Andrea Bonisoli Alquati, a biologist at Cal Poly Pomona who studied the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill within the Gulf of Mexico. “It doesn’t take a number of oil to kill these small organisms.”

This picture of an opalescent nudibranch below the oil platform Elly was taken by Paige Zhang, a graduate scholar in marine biology at UCLA. “You hear about oil spills on a regular basis on the information, and you are feeling like they’re up to now out of your life, however this one is so near all of us,” she stated.

(Paige Zhang)

It’s not a shock that animal life has congregated on the submerged infrastructure of Elly, stated Milton Love, an ichthyologist (fish scientist) at UC Santa Barbara who research how rigs perform as fish habitat.

“There are at all times extra invertebrate larvae drifting round in search of a spot to decide on then there are locations to decide on,” he stated. “After which right here is that this humongous construction with 1,200 toes of metal — that’s a number of stuff to decide on.”

Over time, he’s found that organisms aren’t at all times choosy about the place they make their properties.

Lobsters have been identified to stay in submerged rest room bowls, whereas sarcastic fringehead fishes (sure, that’s their actual identify) have been discovered dwelling in beer bottles that landed on the ocean flooring, he stated.

“You may take an outdated interior tube and throw it proper off of Lengthy Seaside in 80 toes of water, and in a few days there might be three brown rockfish staring on the tire,” Love stated. “They’re drawn to stuff. They don’t care what the stuff is.”

As extra offshore platforms are prone to be decommissioned within the subsequent few years, each in Southern California and elsewhere, there was dialogue about leaving the underwater elements intact due to their worth as synthetic reefs.

As a scientist, Love stated he’s impartial on the difficulty. As a human being, he’s not.

“Pulling out a platform means killing big numbers of marine life, and I don’t assume that’s ethical,” he stated. “That has nothing to do with being a biologist. That’s simply my ethical stance.”

The abundance of life round all these buildings is so notable {that a} 2014 paper in Proceedings of the Pure Academy of Sciences declared oil platforms off California some of the productive marine habitats globally.

Nonetheless, Love stated there’s something significantly particular about Elly and the rig sitting proper subsequent to it, often known as Ellen.

“The folks in my lab and myself have been round nearly all of the platforms in California, and Elly and Ellen have an unusually excessive range of fishes round them,” he stated. “They’re simply nice.”

A photograph of the oil platform Elly taken by UCLA graduate scholar Paige Zhang. She stated she and her dive buddies instantly began texting forwards and backwards once they heard concerning the spill.

(Paige Zhang)

Advertisement

Shawn Wiedrick, who till just lately labored as an assistant curator of invertebrate paleontology on the Pure Historical past Museum of Los Angeles, described his first dive across the Elly rig as “surreal.”

“There have been organisms on prime of organisms, it was so thick,” he stated. “I used to be tasked with taking place and sampling issues, however there was a lot there, it was nearly overwhelming to say ‘What ought to I pattern?’”

It’s that huge range of life that makes the rig so attractive to native divers, stated Kevin Lee, an underwater photographer who has dived the Elly website greater than 30 occasions.

“It’s such a wonderful ecosystem,” Lee stated. “The life is excellent on the market, and it’s way more colourful than what you’ll see on shore. For some native divers it’s their favourite dive website.”

Ashley Arnold, proprietor of Jade Scuba Adventures, who works out of Huntington Seaside and Port Orchard, Wash., remembers seeing strawberry sea anemone, spiky acorn barnacles, and a stunning array of nudibranchs, some with spikes capturing off their smooth our bodies.

On a dive journey to Elly and Ellen in January, she captured video of 4 kinds of bioluminescent jellyfish — alien-looking life varieties that floated by way of the water. She additionally noticed all kinds of fish, together with shiny orange garibaldi, blue-and-silver halfmoons and several other kinds of rockfish.

“It’s an oasis in the midst of an ocean desert,” she stated. “You’ve obtained nothing however deep-water ocean surrounding it.”

Arnold stated rig diving is greatest for skilled divers: Having good buoyancy management is essential to staying protected when swimming among the many pilings and helps, and the ocean currents might be unstable. Someday there’s no present; different occasions “it’s tremendous loopy ripping.”

“It’s utterly unprotected on the market,” she stated.

A few of the marine life discovered under the oil platforms Ellen and Elle.

(Paige Zhang)

Advertisement

To get to the rig, divers usually constitution a ship from Lengthy Seaside or San Pedro. It may possibly take 45 minutes to an hour and a half to get to the location, relying on the pace of the boat. Divers additionally must get permission from the rig’s operator earlier than they head out.

“They’re energetic rigs and dealing your entire time we’re diving, but when they’ve a crew popping out to do work on the construction we don’t wish to be of their means,” Arnold stated.

Norbert Lee, a dive teacher and marine biologist who works for L.A. County Sanitation, stated that earlier than the spill, he tried to do day journeys to the rigs three or 4 occasions a yr.

“We often go between Ellen and Elly, and Eureka, which is a rig that’s quite a bit deeper,” he stated.

His technique is to rapidly descend to the utmost depth of the dive after which slowly make his means as much as shallower water — harvesting scallops to eat, and enjoying with sea lions alongside the best way.

“These scallops are tremendous tasty,” he stated. “It’s the most effective dive websites, to be sincere.”

Lee is hopeful the cleanup efforts might be efficient sufficient that he’ll have the ability to dive the rig once more sometime, however stated “it’s arduous to listen to that it got here out of a spot that you simply dive a lot, to not point out all of the ecological impacts it has on the wetlands. It sort of broke my coronary heart.”

Zhang stated she and her dive buddies instantly began texting forwards and backwards once they heard concerning the spill.

“You hear about oil spills on a regular basis on the information, and you are feeling like they’re up to now out of your life, however this one is so near all of us,” she stated.

She worries concerning the hundreds of thousands of stationary animals on the rig who’re unable to swim away from oil slicks. She wonders how she can assist with the cleanup. And he or she thinks about when she’ll have the ability to get again into the water, and the place.

Zhang obtained extra critical about diving through the pandemic, and, as with many frequent divers, it’s now an important a part of her life.

Strawberry anemones cling to the oil platforms Ellen and Elly off the Southern California coast.

(Paige Zhang)

“As soon as I’m down there, I simply really feel like my head is cleared, I don’t take into consideration work, I don’t take into consideration something,” she stated. “You might be completely within the second. It’s gotten to the purpose the place I’ve hassle sleeping if I don’t dive for greater than per week.”

Although not sufficient info has been launched but to make a prediction on when the waters across the rig might be protected for divers once more, Love stated there may be motive to be optimistic that the animals that make their dwelling on Elly will survive this ecological catastrophe.

Ten miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, one other oil platform known as Holly is located amongst massive pure seeps of oil and fuel. Basically, it’s bathed in oil nearly on a regular basis, he stated.

However when Love seemed to see whether or not this platform might assist marine life, he was surprised to find it was coated in thriving sea creatures.

“We didn’t see a lifeless nudibranch or a lifeless something,” he stated.

Love thinks the animals have been spared as a result of all of the oil had risen to the floor. And he’s hopeful the identical might be true for the huge, various and delightful life dwelling on Elly.