How a 14,000 ton oil rig gets removed from the sea
I am fascinated by giant machinery. Big gears doing big things and big drills digging big holes and big structures dwarfed by even bigger ships. This video has it all. Watch as this 14,000 ton
(yep, that's not a typo) oil rig gets decommissioned and brought back to shore leaving only those poor little legs behind in the middle of the sea.
PS: What if a ship runs into those leftover legs in the future?
Turning Oil Rigs Into Reefs
This video reminds me of what the NYC MTA did with old Redbird Subway cars by dumping them into the ocean to create artificial reefs. This type of artificial reef, obviously, is made from defunct oil rigs in the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of Southern California. It's amazing to see these giant structures turned into living spaces for aquatic life. The scale of these structures is insane, especially when you see in the video how small a diver is compared to just one single beam of support for these ocean structures. I've always wondered how these rigs are anchored to the ocean floor (is it just not as deep as I thought?) or are they just really, really, really insanely tall? Also, how do they not degrade with the salt water to the point where they just collapse slowly? So many questions...
But look at those reefs! Teeming with life and other sea creatures all using the base of the rig as a life support system. Pretty cool. I'd love to dive here too!
You can read up on this transformative process over at The New York Times.