Bird Station - An alternative to oil rig decomissionning

BIRD STATION AN ALTERNATIVE TO OIL RIG DECOMISSIONNING

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« ASIDE FROM THE DRAMATIC SPATIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC EXPANSION OF MAJOR MEGA-CITY REGIONS, THE LAST THIRTY YEARS HAVE ALSO WITNESSED SEVERAL FAR-REACHING WORLDWIDE SOCIO-SPATIAL TRANSFORMATIONS. THESE INCLUDE [...] THE END OF THE WILDERNESS. IN EVERY REGION OF THE GLOBE, ERSTWHILE “WILDERNESS” SPACES ARE BEING TRANSFORMED AND DEGRADED THROUGH THE CUMULATIVE SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OFUNFETTERED WORLDWIDE URBANISATION. » URBAN CONSTELLATIONS, « PLANETARY URBANISATION »

BY NEIL BRENNER & CHRISTIAN SCHMID

AS URBAN REFERS TO « WORLDWIDE CONDITIONS IN WHICH POLITICAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS ARE ENMESHED», THE OCCUPATION OF THE SEA BY THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY CAN ALSO BE SEEN AS A FORM OF URBANISATION OFFSHORE. BESIDE THE FACT THAT WE KNOW HOW BAD THE ENVIRONNEMENTAL IMPACT OF THE INDUSTRY CAN BE IN A LARGE SCALE, THE OIL RIGS AND THE ACTIVITIES ONBOARD, AT A SMALLER SCALE, ALSO CONTRIBUTE TO THE END OF THE «WILDERNESS» BY DISTURBING SEALIFE. ON THE OTHER HAND, THE PRESENCE OF THESE STRUCTURES OFFSHORE CREATE NEW HABITATS, AND IN THAT SENSE, REPRESENT A GOOD OPPORTUNITY TO CORRECT THE DISTURBANCE THEY HAVE CREATED BEFORE.

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This is the North Sea. 54000 km3 of water shared between the United Kingdom, Norway,

Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium

and France.

Since the beginning of the 50’s, the North sea raised the interest of the oil industry who started to plan the ownship of those waters.

Very quickly, some steel and concrete creatures made for extracting the oil and the gas out of the seabed started to appear in the north sea, under and above the water...

If those platforms and the oil industry made the fortune of humans exploiding the oil, they affect significantly the inhabitants o f the North Sea living underwater or a bove the sea like me...

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I am a Rissa tridactyla tridactyla, most commonly known as Black-legged Kittiwake, the most numerous type of gull in the planet.

I was born on the cliffs by the coast of Norway where my parents were breeding.

When I grew up, I flew away to Scotland.

But the intensive fishery made it difficult to find food that’s why I decided to move to the open ocean, to these platforms.

GYDA

I am now living in the south of the norwegian part of the north sea.

Block 2-1...

Along the eastern edge of the module C40 on Gyda, a 40 years-old steel platform laying in 65m of water and drilling 4000m deep.

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For cost-effective purpose, humans need the platforms to work continuously, day and night, which makes the area quite noisy and luminous until 5km around every platform.

But I guess this is the price to pay to access food.

over the decades, different species of bacterias, soft and hard macrofouling like anemones, sponges, mussels, barnacles, tubeworms, mussels established themselves on the steel jackets underwater.

Acting like coral reef. platforms attract a huge amount of fish and in that sense represent an incredible source of food for us. plus, to avoid damages of the platforms, the ships unrelated to the petroleum industry are not allowed to enter the 500m area around each offshore installation.

Which protects the area from fishery.

It is also quite an animated and cosmopolitan neighbourhood that attracts a lot of different species as the seasons go by.

shore birds like me, fulmars, and other gulls are the most numerous on the platforms. But it is common to meet migratory birds such as passerines and red knots. They use the platforms for resting on their exhausting way from High Arctic nesting areas to wintering spots in africa. sometimes, you can also see falcons prowling around, looking for flying preys. and more recently, especially because of the light pollution disoriented owls started to be seen over there.

I also love flying around, feeling the fresh air along my feathers, gliding between the platforms, there is always so much things happening down there.

But one needs to be careful. Accidents happen very quickly. incinerations in flares and Collisions with cranes are the most frequent and the most lethal.

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One day, after 40 years of drilling, the production stops on Gyda.

No more flame, no more moving cranes, no more humans running around.

And the silence.

It happens almost once a year when there is no more oil to extract after decades of pumping or when the platform becomes too old. So at first I wasn’t very surprised and just enjoyed flying around in peace

Usually the calm lasts until few months before they come with their big boats and more cranes to remove everything.

Then all the residents have to move out their nest in a hurry.

most of the time They even remove the steel jacket by using explosives and abrasives, destroying the habitats that were established underwater. as a consequence, fish desert the area and you better find another place to feed. and it also affects migrating birds by reducing the amount of stepping stones to rest they come across on their journeys, causing death by exhaustion

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But this time, things happened differently.

One morning, one of these ships arrived, removed the module M20 and left the same day, leaving this big empty space between modules L10 and M50.

It was even more fun to fly around, be able to glide through the platform.

Quickly after, some shelf were installed in the facade of module L10, perfect for nesting. That’s why some more birds from other platforms started to move in there

In the next few days, new people arrived, but these ones were different. It took me some time to realise why.

These ones were not chasing us away.

They were even looking at us.

They moved in module L10 as well, in what they call their “living quarters”and we became neighbours.

WE NOTICED SOON THAT SOMETHING ELSE WAS HAPPENING. SOME OF THE EXHAUSTED OR INJURED BIRDS LANDING ON GYDA, THAT WERE USUALLY HOPING FOR GETTING BETTER BY THEMSELVES, THEY WERE TAKEN BY THOSE HUMANS TO MODULE M30 AND RELEASED FEW DAYS AFTER, HEALED AND FULL OF ENERGY. WHAT WAS BEFORE A SUPER NOISY MODULE FOR OIL PRODUCTION BECAME A BIRD REHAB FACILITY TURNING GYDA INTO A BIRD SANCTUARY.

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SINCE THE NUMBER OF BIRD SPECIES JOINING THE RED LIST IS INCREASING, RELATED TO THE DEGRADATION OF NATURAL HABITAT, THE EXPLOITATION OF FOOD RESOURCES AND THE INTERACTION WITH OIL AND GAS ACTIVITY, THE STRATEGICAL LOCATION OF THE PLATFORM IN THE OPEN OCEAN AND THE AMOUNT OF BIRD SPECIES IT ATTRACTS ALSO PRESENT A HUGE ADVANTAGE BOTH FOR SCIENTISTS AND BIRDWATCHERS.

they are conducting their research and watching activity from small wooden observatories shelter that we are also using as perch...

along the derrick...

....on top of the flare boom...

...and Underneath the heliport

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CLOSE TO 70 OTHER OIL PLATFORMS LIKE GYDA HAVE BEEN CLOSED DOWN IN THE LAST FEW YEARS AND ARE NOW WAITING FOR DECOMMISSIONING ALL OVER THE NORTH SEA. WITHIN THE NEXT TEN YEARS, HUNDRED MORE WILL FOLLOW. SINCE THE OIL AGE IS NOT ABOUT TO BE DONE SOON, ABANDONNED RIG HAS TO BE SEEN AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO PROVIDE SOLUTION FOR BIODIVERSITY PRESERVATION IN INTERACTION WITH OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY. CONSIDERING THE DECLINE OF FISH RESOURCES BY THE COAST, THE CURRENT SEA LEVEL RISE AND THEREFORE THE SUBMERSION OF STEPPING STONE, CRUCIAL FOR THE SURVIVAL OF MIGRATING BIRDS, FINDING SAFE REEFS IN THE OPEN OCEAN HAS BECOME A NECESSITY FOR BIRD PRESERVATION. IN THAT SENSE THE CASE OF GYDA SHOULD BE CONSIDERED WITHIN A LARGER SCALE IN SPACE AND IN TIME BY BEING PART OF A WHOLE NETWORK OF BIRD STATION RIGS THAT WILL INCREASE OVER TIME.

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EXPLORATIONS IN OCEAN SPACE II BERGEN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Teachers: Nancy Couling & Vibeke Jensen, Julia Morrissey (assistant) With Marianna Anichini (Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg) Tormod Amundsen (Biotope) Author : Zoelie Millereau--Dubesset