[Coral-List] Bring Back the Gulf

[Eugene Shinn]

Having served on the Dept. of Interior Minerals Management Service 
science committee (3 years and before the name change) and having spent 
many hours diving and researching and photographing marine life under 
offshore rigs I am well aware of the extensive scientific research done 
on the environmental effects of rigs and artificial reefs in general. 
These rigs exist in an area consisting of miles and miles of featureless 
gooey mud populated mainly by shrimp. I am also aware of the marine life 
lost when explosives are placed in the rig legs in order blow them off 
below the "mud line" as stipulated by existing regulations.Almost every 
fish down there including thousands of pounds of red snapper, grouper, 
angel fish and other tropicals that depend on these habitats, including 
protected turtles, become shark food when rigs are blasted loose from 
the bottom. Why is there no concern for the bicatch discarded by 
shrimpers.  One has to consider where the idea and political motivation 
to remove these essential marine habitats from the Gulf is coming from. 
The decision certainly is not science or humanitarian-based and neither 
does it make ecological sense. We can only scratch our heads and wonder, 
especially since the secretary of the interior who created the idle iron 
project has moved on. The authors of this book have mixed damage from 
oil with iron, a primary ocean nutrient. These rigs are no longer 
extracting oil so oil is irrelevant to their argument. Is the makings of 
another NGO being developed to provide tax benefits to the unwary? 
Follow the money. Gene

-- 


No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
------------------------------------ -----------------------------------
E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
University of South Florida
College of Marine Science Room 221A
140 Seventh Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
<eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
Tel 727 553-1158
---------------------------------- -----------------------------------