Beautiful and rare corals on old offshore installations

Photo : Rudolf  Svensen and Erling Svensen.  Text av Rudolf Svensen

It is October 1995. I am standing on one of the bridges connecting the offshore installations on the Frigg Field in the North Sea. It took the chopper aprox. one hour to get here, so it is really far out in the open sea. I am watching the big waves breaking on the steel foundation of the platform TCP1 while I think of what happened last evening. We were down in the concrete shaft of the platform TCP2. 90 metres below the surface it was only the concrete walls that kept the sea apart from us. I was wondering what it looked like on the other side of the wall? What kind of marine creatures lived outside in the opne sea? It would be very exciting to dive on one of these installations, but it is not possible. Offshore regulations, rough conditions and inaccessibility will make sure I never get my dream fullfilled.

19. March 2010. I hoist the tank on to my sholders, grab the camera with my right hand and start walking towards the water together with my brother Erling. In the sea just in front of us is the rest of the jacket from TCP1 resting outside the quay. The last two years have the installations on the Frigg Field been stripped down piece by piece and this part of the steel jacket is the last to be cut into pieces. On one leg lying on the qay behind us is loads of the deepwater coral Lophelia pertuisa. We are here to photograph, film and take gene samples of what hopefully is alive corals. A bit more than an hour later is the job done. The memory cards are full of unique images and we feel very lucky that we have had this opertunity to experience something like this. Not only did we find large occurrences of the reef building coral Lophelia Pertusa, but we also found many specimens of the coral Desmophyllum cristagalli which have been registered in Norway only a couple of times. While we are on our way back to Stavanger, the corals outside the quay have their own peoblems. Soon the jacket they grow on will be cut to pieces, hoist on to trucks and sent to a plant where they will be melted down to new steel structures.

All pictures and text: Copyright © UWPhoto Photographer

All pictures may be bought and downloaded directly from our Photostock: www.uwp.no

Follow us on Twitter  Facebook
 

Address
Haraldskroken 26
N-4041 Hafrsfjord
Norway

NO- 984 851 081