Rigged for Tuna

The oil and naturalgas platforms erected around coastal Louisiana number in the thousands, and come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. Some are manned while many others are not, and yet all of them provide an essential benefit for the fish that inhabit the northern Gulf of Mexico; they become habitat.

Before the rigs came along, the bottom of the northern Gulf resembled much of the rest of the coastal Gulf, meaning it was flat mud and sand, with the occasional rock or reef cropping up. Overall, relief was scarce.

But the rigs changed all that, creating an incredible amount of underwater structure in the