The morning swell off the Santa Barbara coast is running high as the crew boat churns away from the pier west of Haskell’s Beach toward Platform Holly.

Nearly a dozen lawyers and engineers, dressed in fire-retardant coveralls, hard hats and fat, orange life jackets, crowd the aft deck. Almost two years ago, Holly — one of 27 oil platforms along the California coast from Huntington Beach to Point Arguello — became property of the state after its owner, Venoco, filed for bankruptcy.

The future of the platform is in question, but all drilling has ceased and the wells will be sealed. The work, estimated to cost around $350 million, is expected to be completed no sooner than 2021.

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Out on the water, the air is cool. Fog drifts up against the Santa Ynez Mountains, and filtered sunlight sparkles off the ocean. The Channel Islands begin to emerge from the haze.

Holly joins six other oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel scheduled to be permanently shut down and possibly removed, the result of aging oil fields and a changing political and economic environment that once supported the highest concentration of platforms in the state.

For nearly five decades, these ungainly structures have earned a nearly iconic, inescapable status in the California landscape. Legend has it that Holly, seen at night from the beach at Isla Vista, inspired Doors singer Jim Morrison to write “The Crystal Ship,” and drivers following the coast from Gaviota to La Conchita might understand why.

At twilight, the platforms brighten the horizon with their lights. They seem mysterious, even pretty, but up close, the hulking forms and the clatter of machinery illuminate harder truths.

Two miles — and a 20-minute boat ride — from Isla Vista, Platform Holly is managed by the State Lands Commission and sits in state waters.

As California pushes ahead in the fight against climate change, drilling seems an anachronism, a throwback to when oil fields — like the rivers and forests — were there for the taking and the coast bristled with derricks. Building a platform offshore seemed a brave endeavor.

Platform Holly From the top of the drilling derrick to the caissons anchored in the seafloor, the offshore oil platform is more than 400 feet tall. 235’ Vent stack (Burn-off flare) Drilling derrick Galley and lockers Heliport Drill deck 60’ Production deck 38’ 25’ East boat landing Waterline - 0’0 -26’ -65’ -113’ -162’ Seafloor -211’

That romance came to an abrupt end not long after it began. On Jan. 28, 1969, workers lost control of a well they were drilling on a platform 17 miles east of Holly, and 80,000 barrels of oil poured into the ocean, inspiring the state, then Congress, to take steps to stop the development of new platforms in local and federal waters.

Fifty years later, memories of that spill still ache, and the platforms offshore gleam even less, models of dirty technology and of an archaic dependency on fossil fuels. Holly’s decommissioning is celebrated by environmentalists, activists and residents of the Santa Barbara coast. Just two miles offshore, the platform is a conspicuous reminder of the threat drilling poses to this treasured shoreline.

Today the Trump administration wants to reopen the coast to exploration and drilling, and the state is fighting back. In September, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation banning construction of new pipelines and piers connecting federal waters to state land.

As the crew boat approaches Holly, the visitors crane their necks toward the spindly superstructure overhead.

After three years of dormancy, the platform is a rusty ghost ship. Corrosion cakes switches and pressure gauges, their needles long parked at zero. The drone of air compressors echoes from inside, where a skeleton crew keeps the most basic systems operational.

For almost 50 years, environmental politics has been the backdrop for the hundreds of workers who climb aboard these platforms every day, and the loss of Holly is a stinging reminder of the state’s conflicted relationship with this crucial resource.

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