Two miles off the coast of Goleta, Platform Holly rises from the Pacific. A 100-foot-tall steel industrial spire against the horizon, lit up like a modern constellation. Installed in 1966, Holly pumped oil for nearly five decades. Since closing in 2015 after the Refugio Oil Spill, the rig has stood idle — a relic of California’s petroleum past.
But beneath the water, the view changes entirely.
Divers descending along Holly’s legs encounter dense colonies of mussels, anemones, barnacles, and sea stars. Rockfish hover in the shadows. Lingcod patrol the lower crossbeams. The rig’s submerged jacket structure functions, in ecological terms, as a vertical reef…