I just saw a blurb on the news showing the "Cone" for Gustav and they showed an image of all the rigs off of the LA, MS coast and it looked like it is littered with these rigs. I had no idea that there were so many off the coast. I was just wondering if there was some rough number?

ALOT!

Numbers vary but likely around 4000 - lots of different sizes, some in federal waters some in state so the total number is tough to get a handle on it. Last stats I dealt w/ had 70% off LA, 20% off TX and 10% MS/AL or so.
For details go the GOM section of MMS (mms.gov)

More than post Gustav?

According to MMS.gov


There are 6972 of those listed in the database. Roughly 3290 of those are in use. The majority are unmanned. The rest are either removed, abandoned, or in some other status.


http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/lsesale/visual1.pdf

Zoom in on it, every black square is a rig of some sort.

According to MMS.gov




http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/lsesale/visual1.pdf

Zoom in on it, every black square is a rig of some sort.

Good God, I had no idea there were that many! Thanks for the info.

I read an interesting study of the red snapper fishery in the 1800's. There were productive numbers of fish both in the eastern gulf and somewhere off the Texas coast, but there were no snapper in the upper gulf in the vicinity of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Several expeditions were made to find snapper around Lousiana, with dismal results.

There simply was no structure to support them. The bottom here is a silty mud. I'm sure the same could be said for grouper, other snapper, etc.

Fast forward to today - with thousands of rigs and very active artificial reef programs off the coast of Alabama there are now millions of red snapper that make this area home, along with many millions of other fish.

Not exactly the story you'll get from the environmental groups. Or our all-knowing fishery managers.

And the Snapper on the rigs aren't even counted in the surveys that regulate the recreational quotas and season length!

Last email I recieved is they wanted to stop drilling because tarpon eggs don't hatch well on oil rigs because they get eaten by other fish which congregate there.

The enviros don't know enough about tarpon eggs as they are free floaters from the time they are laid.

The enviros will try anything, they are desperate.

Louis and other rig divers, I am curious as to what rig diving is like... I have never done it... with so many rigs how do you choose, are there different depths/bottom structures that you look for or is it mainly the vis that determines where you go? Also how many miles do you run on an average trip? Is the fishing all on the legs of the rigs or does the bottom hold fish too? (or is it too deep to go the bottom?)

there arent any fish on the rigs at all except for these really big aggresive sharks that only feed on out of town divers:)......

I like to think of an oil rig as a vertical reef. There are fish from surface all the way to the bottom and around the rig most of the time. I have only been diving a few years so I am sure others will have more to dive. I choose rigs depending on what I have seen in the pass. Normally I have a plan to dive an area and then look for a rig that doesn't have boat on it. Here in Texas we have a sand/mud bottom that slopes off very slowly so we normally have to make longer runs to find deeper/clean water. All of out river have a tendency to make the water near shore to have bad vis. Last weekend we made long run of about 60-80 miles out to water over 200'. There were some nice fish but most were deep. Saturday I think I will run about 30-35 miles out and dive water less that 150'. I am going to make atleast one shallow water dive inside 9 miles to get a few red snapper.