Association of reef fish with oil and gas platforms in the Northern Gulf of Mexico

Abstract

Offshore oil and gas platforms support abundant reef fish and are popular fishing sites for recreational anglers. However, the rapid decommissioning and removal of active platforms have decreased such fishing opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico, raising concerns about fisheries impacts. Conversely, planned offshore energy structures like wind turbines may offer similar habitats and fishing sites. To inform spatial planning for marine energy infrastructure in the context of recreational fisheries, we created models of fish communities associated with oil and gas platforms using existing abundance data. We employed Random Forest analysis to predict the presence‐absence and abundance of Red Snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) and Greater Amberjack (Seriola dumerili) at platforms using 47 environmental and platform variables. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling on Bray−Curtis dissimilarities explored fish species composition among 37 species. Results showed variability in Red Snapper and Greater Amberjack incidence/abundance from shore to shelf‐edge, not attributed to surrounding habitat or climatological oceanographic variables. Incidence models were more robust than abundance models. Fish species composition was significantly influenced by location gradient, with less impact from other habitat features. Our findings guide selecting areas for artificial structures to enhance angler opportunities and maintain fish diversity, but identifying the drivers of finer scale abundance variation will require further sampling.