The argument against repurposing the platforms—for scuba hotels, fish farms, solar platforms, or anything else—was that the metal on these structures, some as long and wide as a football field, corrodes and leaches dangerous pollution over time. “Oceans shouldn’t be junk yards,” said Richard Charter, a senior fellow at the Ocean Foundation, a marine research and advocacy organization. Sinking the rigs so that they could become scaffolding for reefs was an equally bad idea, he contended. Collapsing the rigs onto the seafloor does not actually promote aquatic life; it just attracts fish, which
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