Translocation, Homing Behavior and Habitat Use of Groundfishes Associated with Oil Platforms in the East Santa Barbara Channel, California

Abstract

All offshore oil and gas platforms have finite economic life spans. One of the decommissioning options for these platforms is complete removal, requiring the use of explosives to dislodge the support structure from below the seafloor. Off California, this decommissioning option would kill large numbers of platform-associated and commercially important groundfishes that inhabit the bases of the platforms, and may potentially affect regional fish populations. Capturing and translocating fishes before removing a platform might mitigate the effects of platform removal. In this study, we acoustically tagged 79 rockfishes and lingcod from three oil platforms in the east Santa Barbara Channel and translocated them to a natural reef inside a state marine reserve at Anacapa Island to determine whether individuals would home back to their platforms of capture, or take up residency at their new location. Movements between natural and platform habitats were monitored over a two-year period. Twenty-five percent of all tagged fishes translocated to a natural reef returned to their home platforms relatively quickly, traveling distances from 11 km to ≥18 km, in 10.5 h to 17 d. Those that did not home took up residency at Anacapa Island, moved to Santa Cruz Island or out of the range of detection. Although a small proportion of fish (25%) homed back to the platforms, a higher proportion (75%) remained at their platforms of release. Those that homed back to their platform of capture did so relatively quickly (avg 15 ± 31 d). Lingcod had the highest probability of homing back to their platform of capture, typically doing so in < 1 day. These results suggest that fish translocation may be a successful, but costly mitigation strategy for platforms that require full decommissioning and that some species may be more successfully translocated than others.