An assessment of fish and marine growth associated with an oil and gas platform jacket using an augmented remotely operated vehicle

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32 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Scientists, industry and regulators are seeking to understand the influence of oil and gas infrastructure in our oceans to mitigate its impacts and maximise environmental benefits. This project equipped a standard work-class ROV with a light-weight stereo-video camera system to collect high definition imagery of fish and habitats formed by marine growth associated with Woodside Energy's Goodwyn Alpha Platform jacket (GWA) 138 km offshore of Dampier, north-west Australia. ROV video surveys were rapidly performed by industry on four faces of the GWA jacket, from the surface to the seabed at 130 m, yielding 1 h and 14 min of imagery. The stereo-video cameras continued to film during standard ROV operations collecting a further 150 h of HD imagery, used to build a comprehensive fish species list. A total of 8676 individual fish from at least 57 species and 20 families, with an estimated combined mass of 8719 kg, were recorded from the vertical transects of four faces of the jacket. An additional 43 fish species from 21 families were recorded via rapid assessment of a subset of the additional, standard ROV operations imagery. The jacket was characterised by abundant Caranx sexfasciatus (bigeye trevally), Pseudanthias spp. (basslets), Heniochus diphreutes (schooling bannerfish), Labridae sp. (wrasse) and Acanthurus spp. (surgeonfish). Several fish important to the demersal scalefish fishery in the region were observed, including: Lutjanus argentimaculatus (mangrove jack), Lutjanus erythropterus (crimson snapper), Lutjanus malabaricus (saddletail snapper), Lutjanus russellii (Moses' snapper). Eleven broad marine growth types were observed with encrusting/enveloping species (brown algae, filamentous mat, coralline algae, calcite) and hard corals (Tubastrea sp.) present in the greatest coverage. Both marine growth and fish assemblages changed markedly with depth. The addition of a lightweight stereo-video system to an industrial ROV and the allocation of short amounts of time for rapid vertical surveys provided important information on the ecology of an oil and gas platform jacket. Future industrial ROV campaigns should consider utilising this approach to gather scientific information that may have value in the context of decommissioning comparative assessments and, more generally, improves our understanding of the impact of oil and gas infrastructure in our oceans.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)66-84
Number of pages19
JournalContinental Shelf Research
Volume179
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 May 2019

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