{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Flanigan's Eco-Logic","title":"Amber Sparks and Emily Hazelwood -- Oil Rigs to Reefs","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2039,"description":"This episode is about repurposing retired offshore oil rigs into reefs, maintaining highly enriched ecosystems for fisheries and marine life. Instead of removing offshore oil rigs when their oil is exhausted, this episode focuses on how they are being repurposed for multiple benefits. Blue Latitude co-founders, Amber Sparks and Emily Hazelwood, join Ted in describing their 10+ year endeavor doing just this... how their company was formed and what it does to take the concept of rigs to reefs and to turn it into a win-win reality.\nIn graduate school at the Scripps Institution for Oceanography in La Jolla, California, Amber and Emily were scuba diving off oil rigs in the Santa Barbara Channel and witnessed remarkable sights... abundant sea life clinging on to the oil rigs supporting scaffolds. The operating rigs were creating vibrant marine ecosystems, starting with invertebrates like barnacles and sea anemones... then scallops and more, providing nurseries for schools of fish. The rigs' subsea infrastructure preserves and produces marine life, provides refuge, and has even proven to support biodiversity and reverse extinction, notably of sea stars in California. After presenting their thesis research at a conference, they were approached by an oil company that was keen on exploring the rigs to reefs option for defunct undersea infrastructures. \nWhile oil companies are responsible for removing their rigs, and returning their leased sites to their pre-existing conditions, Amber and Emily explain that their research on the undersea life revealed an alternative approach... something they now describe as \"reefing.\" This is taking advantage of massive subsea infrastructures, scaffoldings of beams and cross-bars, that provide habitat for marine life. At the end of the rigs' oil extraction, why not maintain these new-found ecological zones below an 80-foot draft for safe passage of ships, and remove the \"topsides?\" Supporting this approach is exactly what Blue Latitudes...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/7kUbICrzk0aEuZffrVBGprBuBqZJlmqp9h-fda_2pHg/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzM1MTQ0LzE3MTE1/NjgzMTctYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}