{"id":138346,"date":"2025-09-15T07:09:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T07:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/138346\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T07:09:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T07:09:16","slug":"corals-growing-on-north-sea-oil-rigs-rehomed-on-artificial-reef-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/138346\/","title":{"rendered":"Corals growing on North Sea oil rigs rehomed on artificial reef"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Until now, coral attached to the legs of oil and gas installations have either been composted or sent to landfill when the platforms have been removed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But the new initiative is giving them new homes close to west of Shetland oil fields where exclusion zones will protect them from destructive fishing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is hoped that Offshore Marine Protected Areas, which are being proposed by the Scottish government, will protect them in the longer-term.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Experts say the once abundant cold-water corals of the northern North Sea fell victim to bottom-trawling and dredging, a fishing method which can damage the sea bed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tropical corals, which live in shallower water, face an existential threat from climate change, with warming waters causing bleaching.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But deep sea corals face different problems from an increasing lack of food and ocean acidification which can corrode the hard structures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Until now, coral attached to the legs of oil and gas installations have either been composted or sent&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-138346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}