Natural coral reefs grow oh-so-slowly. Artificial ones sometimes grow by leaps and bounds, as scientists from Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi recently discovered. The scientists are in the midst of a two-year survey of marine life around artificial structures in the Gulf, which I’ve been covering since [...]

It’s been a busy week for scientists in the Gulf of Mexico Last week, scientists dropped longlines at artificial reef sites off the Texas coast, pulling up some nice-looking red snapper, gray snapper and triggerish. No fish and chips for dinner, though; these specimens were measured, weighed and contributed various tissue samples for research. Meanwhile, [...]

My plans called for heading out from Port Aransas, Texas aboard MoAzul on Wednesday, August 29 – about the time Hurricane Isaac is expected to slam into the northern Gulf Coast. I hoped to watch Greg Stuntz, Jennifer Wetz and other scientists from the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies conduct ROV surveys [...]

We see fish. Big schools of them, swimming around artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico, not far from the Texas shore. These reefs have been created from parts of oil and gas platforms, Liberty ships, and concrete and other materials to provide habitat for marine life. Many scientists believe such structures actually increase the [...]

More than three thousand offshore oil and gas platforms currently stand in the Gulf of Mexico. Federal regulations have long required companies to remove everything from the sea once a well ceases production, and over the past several decades, hundreds of structures have been toppled into deep water or towed to shore to become scrap [...]