A DEEPEND retreat was held on the campus of University of South Florida, St. Petersburg on September 23^rd-24^th.   In attendance were co-PIs, research scientists, and students.  A broad range of topics were discussed from water feature classification, to genomics, to physical oceanography and food web dynamics.   

It has been six years since the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Plants and animals were harmed and the places they call home destroyed. The money brought in by fisheries and tourism was cut. A way of life was tarnished.

With the highly anticipated Deepwater Horizon movie starring Mark Whalberg, Kurt Russell and Kate Hudson due for release later this week, attention to one of the world’s worst oil spills is sure to be reignited.

But long before cameras started rolling on the disaster thriller, researchers at FIU’s School of Environment, Arts and Society have been focused on uncovering the far-reaching environmental damage done to the Gulf of Mexico from the oil spill. Their goal is to inform future ecological assessment efforts to better monitor and understand changing conditions.

Read the entire article here

There are hundreds of deep-pelagic fish species in the Gulf of Mexico, but we know very little about their taxonomy, diversity, and population sizes. Max Weber plans to catch fifteen individual specimens of each of the 500 known deep-sea Gulf fish species to help us better understand these organisms and how the Deepwater Horizon oil spill may have impacted them and environment.

Max is a marine biology master’s student at Texas A&M University (TAMU) and a GoMRI Scholar with the DEEPEND consortium. 

Read the entire article on the GOMRI website

Drs. Joe Lopez and Cole Easson presented a paper titled "Pelagic microbial community dynamics in northern Gulf of Mexico" at the Ecological Society of America, Annual Meeting in Ft Lauderdale, Aug 7 - Aug 12, 2016

The conference had very strong microbial ecology component, across many different biomes. Cole and other NSU students attended helpful, in depth workshops emphasizing the use of R and statistics.