The role of oil and gas platforms in providing habitat for northern Gulf of Mexico red snapper, Lutjanus campechanus

Abstract

The northern Gulf of Mexico (GOM) off Louisiana and Texas currently produces significant portions of the commercial and recreational harvests of red snapper Lutjanus campechanus; however, this has not always been the case. Annual commercial landings in the five states bordering the GOM indicate a shift in the fishery from the eastern to the more western GOM since 1970 concomitant with the placement of several thousand oil and gas platforms into the area. Although the addition of considerable complex steel structure to the environment and the shift of the red snapper fishery to Louisiana and Texas may be coincidental, there is still a need to better understand the role of oil and gas platforms in red snapper life history. Quantitative estimates of red snapper associated with platforms have been derived both from assessments of the effects of platform removal via explosives and from hydroacoustic surveys of selected platforms. Based both on these estimates and on the numbers of platforms sited at depth, we estimate from 1.2 to 7.2 million red snapper live around platforms placed at depths of 20 - 100 m. Many of these are relatively young individuals of ages 2 - 4 years. These numbers suggest a range of red snapper abundances reflecting the ubiquitous presence of red snapper at oil and gas platforms. We intend to continue this line of investigation to determine if platforms have become “essential”" to the persistence of a large population of red snapper in the northern GOM.