Abstract

The High Island A-389-A (HI-A-389-A) gas platform is located within the boundaries of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary (FGBNMS) in the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico. The platform emerges from 124 meters water depth, 185 kilometers southeast of Galveston, Texas, and is 1.6 km from the coral reef crest of the East Flower Gar-den Bank. HI-A-389-A was installed in 1981 and has developed a complex benthic and fish community over the past thirty two years by providing hard substrate within the water column. Much scientific debate has centered on what role oil and gas platforms and other artificial reefs play in the larger Gulf of Mexico ecosystem and what their relationship and level of similarity is to natural coral reefs. FGBNMS research team divers conducted benthic surveys of the vertical and horizontal structures of the platform to document the biological components from forty meters depth to the surface. The benthic community of the platform did not resemble the coral reefs of the FGBNMS and was dominated by fouling organisms. The dominant coral species on the platform was an invasive species of Tubastraea. Relatively few na-tive hermatypic coral colonies were recorded.

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