The site was east Qatar in an area which never had any reefs (very mobile sand) but where they (the oil company) deployed a lot of them. Land pic shows them making more. I think they had not been down long – 4 months or so. Oil companies did some preliminary work to see whether the site would be sensible, and they went ahead. Red algae colonises well, as do Sargassum on another patch I didn’t photograph. Fish are doing well.
