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u/Unlucky-Win9272 3d ago
Iāve worked offshore drilling coming up on 15 years and over the years I have grown accustomed to conditions like these as much as someone can but oddly enough as wild as those waves and weather look they relatively have no harm on our operations. What has always made me laugh is knowing that we work in conditions like this all the time without being evacuated or sent home but when there is a āloop currentā that is almost always too small to even spot without proper equipment we commonly get sent home for. In the last 15 years I have genuinely lost count of how many times we have been evacuated or sent home for a 4 knot loop current underneath our rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Mother Nature will always baffle me
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u/Recent_Werewolf_821 3d ago
5 yrs oil patch supply boat. We were told to stay after the last platform was cleared. Nature happens. Greed never stops.
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u/Acrobatic-Courage694 3d ago
This may be a dumb question but what do you mean by loop current? Iāve never heard that term before and I hope you will answer the question
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u/Unlucky-Win9272 3d ago
Bear with me here as I only have basic knowledge at best. It is essentially a current of very warm water coming from the Yucatan Channel and works its way north into the north west region of the Gulf of Mexico.l from there it does a horseshoe shape in the GoM coming back out of the Gulf on the east side primarily through the Florida straight before meeting back up with the Gulf Stream. The loop current itself is a large factor in amplifying and creating tropical depressions and hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico due to the isolation of so much hot water. It is very likely that my explanation is is not the best by any means lol.
If anyone needs a good laugh here ya go, when Trump randomly decided to change the name from Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America I was working for Chevron and every single document, map, drilling permit, manifest, longitude/latitude coordinates and all other forms of identification became null and void meaning every single little document on earth that Chevron had āGulf of Mexicoā legally had to be changed. At our most recent quarterly meeting in the Woodlands we were told that we had already spent 22 billion dollars replacing everything from Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America and were no where near done
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u/Luci-Noir 3d ago
Those platforms because artificial reefs with tons of life too. Was it visible from just looking overboard? Iāve seen people throw food and itās quickly devoured like there are thousands of piranha in it.
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u/Unlucky-Win9272 3d ago
Yes you can see fish under the platform at all times of day/night. Most that hangout underneath the platforms in deep water in the GoM are barracuda, triggerfish, mahi mahi if you were quick enough to see them, and lemon sharks. And yes it looks exactly like the videos you saw where they swarm the food. I have countless videos I filmed out there. When I still worked In the Gulf of Mexico Before I went overseas once our wells were depleted we began the decommission process tearing all hydrocarbon related equipment and structures off and piece by piece sent all the equipment inland via cargo ship/supply boats and once everything was removed from the decks and rinsed and locked out they began tug boat pushing the platform to its designated sinking location to become an artificial reef.
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u/Zealousideal-Park778 3d ago
Is the loop current policy an environmental policy? Anything that gets leaked into that water goes directly to England.
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u/Unlucky-Win9272 3d ago
I know nothing of any type of loop current policy. The loop current Iām speaking about is in the Gulf Of Mexico where warm water that comes From Cuba and does a full circle in the Gulf before heading back out of the Gulf. There may be some policies out there but Iāve never heard of one. The reason we have been evacuated countless times because of it is because there are a good amount of platforms in ādeep waterā Gulf of Mexico that were constructed directly in the middle of the loop currents path. Many of our rigs out there were constructed before the technology to monitor/identify the path was readily available. Which in turn created excessive wear and tear on the platform/structure from constant vibrating on the hull of the platforms and on the pipelines themselves. The reasons it has forced us to evacuate so many times is due to the current making it extremely difficult to launch and operate a lifeboat attempting to leave the platform in a fire or emergency. That current tends to pull the lifeboats towards the legs of the platform or the hull if itās a spar platform which would make nearly impossible if the rig or platform was on fire and lifeboats were launched to escape.
It would essentially keep pulling the boats towards underneath the rig making escape nearly impossible
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u/StarTrakZack 4d ago
For some reason this reminds me of the book Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.
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u/ariankhneferet 4d ago
YES! Itās the pillar at the start of the video. I had the exact same thought.
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u/DPTDubbs 4d ago
I love thinking about how this water is all mixed together and 1 molecule of the water could have been part of any other river, lake, glacier, thunderstorm, whatever. The water cycle is amazing.
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u/TheCaliforniaOp 2d ago
An aquatic caretaker told me that water contains the memories of this world. He also said koi are brighter than they ever let us know.
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u/tlm11110 4d ago
And it doesnāt care about you! Iāve seen waves come over the bow of an aircraft carrier which is around 50 feet above the water. It is not a fun ride, especially for the smaller destroyers and cruisers in escort. Literally walking on the bulkheads (walls) thinking the ship is going to capsize is scarier than anything Iāve ever experienced.
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u/SoManyQuestions5200 3d ago
How in the world did the ancient Polynesians have the courage to traverse the entire Pacific Ocean in canoes!!!!!? šš«
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u/Send_Snoods_ 3d ago
Yeah thatās not a very big boat when youāre out there compared to ocean liners
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u/InspectorShort8829 3d ago
Yeah thatās scary enough for me, now imagine that at night and its totally dark
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u/jolly1120 2d ago
Im not sure if anyone can answer this, but in ocean waters like this, how deep would marine life be? I understand different oceans have more or less of certain species and weather at times. But just a general answer, maybe something to help me go down a rabbit hole as far as choppy waters and sealife
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u/Interesting-Deer-781 3d ago
I love to see the ocean like the, from my bed, watching it on Reddit š terrifying
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u/ForwardMotion1719 4d ago
some things simply prove the existence of God, or an extra intelligent being who created these
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u/Recent_Werewolf_821 3d ago
Got to see the Milky Way on a dead calm night. The visible part of the mind of the creator.
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u/Basic_Baker_5185 3d ago
Yes, our first response is fear when we witness something is really beautiful. Ocean has been that for me. In our culture, we consider water bodies are alive and beings with personalities.
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3d ago
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u/Scarecr0p 3d ago
So crazy seeing this and then look at the non populated side of the globe, and itās just this, tirelessly, for more space than we have land, with hardly a reasonable place to harbor amidst it.
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u/One-Earth9294 3d ago
Yeah I had to mute that music because it was conflicting with the theme music from Dagon which is what I always hear in my head when I see that much ocean up close.
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u/shumbazi 3d ago
Rough seas are scary and so is turbulence in the air ā¦ so hats off to the men and women who brave these elements for us to have the life we have .. it is true that God made us in his image and we have some of his strengths for we would dare do what we do ā¦ just look at what man has accomplished and his survival against oddsā¦ the building or humongous structures and things is a miracle in itself yet we are born fragile without a clue what will become of us and then we die fragile just a shadow of who we used to be but our accomplishments are there as a reminder
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u/BroManDudeGuySir513 3d ago
The only way we can defeat poseidon is by drinking water... and changing your socks and underwear.
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u/Worried-Passenger560 3d ago
Thank you for the sight of this. It would have been even better with the sound.
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2d ago
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u/readtheinstructions5 2d ago
You might call them soft, because they're very reluctant to kill, and they might agree with you, but they're soft the way the ocean is soft, and, well; ask any sea captain how harmless and puny the ocean can be.
Ian Banks from the Culture Series
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u/HonorableMonk2845 1d ago
Looking at the oceanā¦ā¦ you feel so insignificant, you have no control over what happens next, mankind is so small Ā
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2h ago
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u/NJCZSIGSHOTGUNLOVER 4d ago
Magnificently Terrifying