Plankton are a very important part of the food chain in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico drift through the ocean carried by currents. Although plankton can’t control their movements against the current, they are able to maintain neutral buoyancy by increasing their surface area-to-volume ratio as well as by producing and releasing lipids (fats). In this activity, students use a variety of materials to construct various models of plankton to gain an understanding of neutral buoyancy.
The lesson plan includes a materials list, background educational information, instructions, and a link to a video demonstration of the activity.
The UTMSI released a series of four videos discussing research conducted by scientists with the Relationships of Effects of Cardiac Outcomes in fish for Validation of Ecological Risk (RECOVER) consortium.
Part 1: Port Aransas and Oil
RECOVER scientist Andrew Esbaugh explains why the area surrounding Corpus Christi and Port Aransas, TX, is ideal to study the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Part 2: Gone Fishing – Catching Red Drum for Science
See how scientists catch wild red drum to breed in captivity to answer questions about the way that oil impacts their offspring’s biology and social interactions.
Part 3: Fish Tattoos
Ph.D student Alexis Khursigara is looking at the effects of oil exposure on red drum and if it impacts how fish interact with one another.
Part 4: Fish Treadmills
Researcher Dr. Jacob Johansen is using “fish treadmills” to determine how oil exposure can effect the swim performance of red drum.
Biodegradation? Chromatography? While scientists toss these terms around with no problem, they can sound like a foreign language to others.
The Deep-C consortium partnered with CPALMS, an online toolbox providing free instructional resources for educators, to create a series of videos related to Deepwater Horizon research and the Gulf Oil Observers (GOO) project.
High School Students Work Alongside Woods Hole Experts
Watch how these high school students work alongside Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution experts conducting oil spill science. A CPALMS perspective Video by Catherine Carmichael.
Don’t cry over spilled oil. Take action instead!
Learn how scientists are studying what happens to spilled oil and over time how it affects the environment. A CPALMS perspective video by Catherine Carmichael.
How Crude Oil is Formed and How it Behaves in the Environment
Chris Reddy, an oil scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and research for DEEP-C, explains how crude oil is formed and how it behaves in the environment. A CPALMS perspective Video by Chris Reddy.
Using Oil Fingerprints to Explain the Origins of Spilled Oil
Humans aren’t the only ones who get their fingerprints taken. Learn how this scientist is like a crime scene investigator using oil fingerprints to explain the origins of spilled oil. A CPALMS perspective Video by Chris Reddy.
High School Teacher Holds Class on the Beach
What could be better than having class on the beach and conducting actual research to boot? See how Shawn Walker, a marine science teacher at West Florida High School, transforms his students into scientists. A CPALMS perspective Video.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team released a publication that discusses the concerns that people had about harmful algae blooms (HABS) being triggered by residual oil from the Deepwater Horizon incident. HABs have occurred after oil spills in the past, but the relationship between the two is not always clear.
Read Oil Spills and Harmful Algal Blooms: Disasters with Shared Consequences for Communities to learn about the formation of HABS and the similarities and differences between HABS and oil spills, including environmental factors, duration and persistence, tools for tracking and forecasting their movement, response agencies, and community impacts (seafood and public health safety, economic toll on fisheries, tourism, and recreational activities). Also discussed are potential ways that the frequency of HABS might potentially increase due to sea level rise, increased rainfall, and rising ocean temperatures.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team synthesizes peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general audiences, particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast. Sea Grant offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Alabama Center for Ecological Resilience (ACER) blog hosted a series of posts discussing the meaning behind various terms and concepts that are important to ACER research.
Middle School Student Anja Diercks learns about acoustic release operation to recover a Long Base Line (LBL) acoustic beacon after a successful AUV dive. These LBL beacons are necessary in aiding the Inertial Navigation System of the AUV while on survey on the ocean floor, sometimes at depths of 1600 m or more.
LBL Beacon Recovery
Middle School Student Anja Diercks helps recover the acoustic LBL (Long Base Line) beacon she had released from the ocean floor using an acoustic telemetry system minutes before. The Gulf of Mexico had a surprise for her too.
Fiberoptic Multicorer
Watch this successful collection of deep sea sediment cores during 7+ foot waves on a recent research cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. The Science team from National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology and Mississippi Mineral Resources Institute deployed a deep sea multicoring device in 1200 meters of water depth, attached to a fiberoptic winch cable. On the coring rig, they mounted several cameras and light sources. This spectacular mission was accomplished aboard the RV Pelican, during a recent research conducted for ECOGIG.
Credits: Diercks, A.; National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology (NIUST), Mississippi Mineral Resources Institute (MMRI) Ecosystem Impacts of Oil & Gas Inputs to the Gulf (ECOGIG) and Gulf of Mexico Research Institute (GOMRI).
The Deep Sea to Coast Connectivity in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico (Deep-C) Consortium released a series of publicly available and easy-to-read fact sheets detailing their scientific research and outreach initiatives:
Science: Deepwater Corals
What are corals? Where and how do they live? What are the threats to Gulf corals? Click here to download.
Science: The SailBuoy Project
Experimenting with a new marine device used for scientific observations in the Gulf of Mexico. Click here to download.
Science: Deepwater Sharks
Information about the bluntnose sixgill shark, one of the most common species in the Gulf. Click here to download.
Science: Tiny Drifters – Plankton
What are plankton? Why are plankton important? How did the oil spill affect Gulf plankton? Click here to download.
Science: Oil-Eating Plankton
Naturally occurring microbes in the ocean feed on the hydrocarbons in oil. Click here to download.
Science: Oil Fingerprinting & Degradation
What is oil? How does oil “weathering” occur? And what can oil samples tell us? Click here to download.
Outreach: Gulf Oil Observers
Deep-C’s citizen scientist initiative connecting high school students to ongoing oil spill research. Click here to download.
Outreach: Scientists in the Schools
Interactive visits to middle school classrooms by Deep-C scientists and educators. Click here to download.
Outreach: 2015 Annual ROV Training & Competition
Students from middle and high schools vying for ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) domination. Click here to download.
Gary Finch Outdoors produced a series of videos highlighting various aspects of the Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf (ECOGIG) program, its science, and the important partnerships necessary to make ECOGIG successful. Many of these videos were used by local PBS affiliates in Gulf coast states and were available through the ECOGIG website and YouTube. All videos listed below were developed and produced by Finch Productions, LLC.
What Does ECOGIG Do? (PBS Part 1) (2:20)
Scientists aboard the research vessels R/V Endeavor and E/V Nautilus briefly describe the nature of ECOGIG research.
Collaboration Between Nautilus and Endeavor Tour (PBS Part 2) (2:06)
ECOGIG scientists discuss the research they are conducting on a recent cruise aboard the R/V Nautilus and E/V Endeavor.
ECOGIG R/V Atlantis/ALVIN Cruise: March 30-April 23, 2014 (2:00)
Researchers describe the crucial importance of ALVIN dives in assessing the ecosystem impacts of the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
Deep Sea Life: Corals, Fish, and Invertebrates (4:30)
Dr. Chuck Fisher describes his research examining the fascinating and long-lived deep sea corals impacted by effects of the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
The Eagle Ray Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) News Piece (5:12)
ECOGIG scientists use the Eagle Ray AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) to map the seafloor and get visuals so they can better target their sample collecting for study. The National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology (NIUST) provides the submersible.
(Full Length)
(Shortened News Piece)
Food Webs in the Gulf of Mexico (4:30)
ECOGIG scientists Jeff Chanton and Ian MacDonald, both of Florida State University, explain their complementary work exploring the possibility that hydrocarbons from oil have moved into the Gulf food web. Chanton, a chemical oceanographer, tells of a small but statistically significant rise in fossil carbon, a petrochemical byproduct of oil, showing up in marine organisms sampled from Louisiana to Florida. In addition to the hypothesis that Deepwater Horizon oil might be the culprit, biological oceanographer MacDonald discusses other factors that could also be at play, including coastal marsh erosion, natural oil seeps, and chronic oil industry pollution. This is a Finch Productions, LLC video. For more information, visit ECOGIG.ORG. https://ecogig.org/
Landers Technology Development (4:30)
Most of the area around the Deepwater Horizon spill ranges from 900 – 2000 meters below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. ECOGIG scientists Dr. Chris Martens and Dr. Geoff Wheat talk about Landers, a new technology developed at the University of Mississippi that allows scientists to study the ocean floor at great depths. Landers are platforms custom-equipped with research instruments that can be dropped to the exact site scientists want to study and left for weeks, months, or even years to collect ongoing data.
Marine Snow (4:30)
Dr. Uta Passow describes research she and her colleagues Dr. Arne Dierks and Dr. Vernon Asper conduct on Marine Snow in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil released in 2010 from the Deepwater Horizon explosion floated upwards. Some of this oil then sank towards the seafloor as part of marine snow. When marine snow sinks, it transports microscopic algae and other particles from the sunlit surface ocean to the dark deep ocean, where animals rely on marine snow for food.
Natural Seeps – Geology of the Gulf (4:30)
ECOGIG Scientists Dr. Joe Montoya, Dr. Andreas Teske, Dr. Samantha Joye, and Dr. Ian McDonald describe their collaborative research approach while preparing for the Spring 2014 cruise aboard the R/V Atlantis with research sub ALVIN. Long-term sampling and monitoring of natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico, a global hot spot for these seeps, is crucial for understanding the impacts of oil and gas from explosions like Deepwater Horizon.
Remote Sensing & Modeling (4:30)
ECOGIG scientists Dr. Ian MacDonald and Dr. Ajit Subramaniam describe their work monitoring the health of the Gulf of Mexico via remote sensing. Using images from satellites and small aircraft flown by volunteers, MacDonald looks for signs of surface oil, which could be the result of a natural seep, anthropogenic seeps (chronic oil leaks from ongoing drilling operations), or a larger spill like Deepwater Horizon. Subramaniam uses the changes in light in these images to help him understand what is happening below the sea surface, with particular focus on the health of phytoplankton populations that make up the base of the marine food web. This is a Finch Productions, LLC video with additional footage provided by Wings of Care, a nonprofit that assists with volunteer filming operations.
ROVs in STEM Education News Piece (4:30)
ECOGIG’s Dr. Chuck Fisher describes the use of ROVs in researching deep -sea corals in the Gulf of Mexico, and Ocean Exploration Trust’s Dr. Bob Ballard explains the powerful impacts of ROVs in STEM education, as shown during a recent visit onboard the EV Nautilus by members of the Girls and Boys Club of the Gulf region.
“The BP Oil Spill and Its Aftermath – Exploring Through Art” is a middle and high school level lesson plan that utilizes art to explore oil spill science. During the lesson, students will engage in discussions about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, reflect on and create art related to the spill, and explore ongoing research into the spill’s effect.
The lesson plan was developed by Florida science teacher Alisha Stahl based on her experiences with the DEEPEND Teacher-At-Sea program. The program invites teachers who have completed the consortium’s Gulf of Mexico Exploration Teacher Workshop to join scientists aboard a several-day research cruise. Teachers recorded their at-sea experiences on the DEEPEND Blog and created curricula based on the onboard activities to share with the DEEPEND Education community.
A free downloadable version of the “BP Oil Spill and Its Aftermath – Exploring Through Art” lesson plan can be found HERE. The PowerPoint mentioned in Part 2 of the lesson can be found HERE.
This fun and creative lesson plan teaches students how researchers use oceanographic instruments called drifters to study ocean currents and then has them design and build a drifter of their own. The lesson typically spans five class periods (three for building, one for presentation, and one for testing). The lesson plan includes background information, a complete materials list, and a grading rubric.
This lesson plan teaches middle and high school students how ocean currents transport debris, spilled oil, and other pollutants through the ocean environment.
The lesson uses real data collected during the Biscayne Bay Drift Card Study (Bay Drift), a citizen science study that used Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE) GPS drifters and small wooden drift cards to observe local currents and pollutant transport.
“Bay Drift: Tracking Ocean Pollution” can be completed in a single class period and provides teachers with background information on ocean pollution transport as well as step-by-step instructions for introducing students to the study. Students will learn how to: (1) analyze drifter data; (2) describe, compare, and contrast both types of drifters used in the study; and (3) use local currents to predict where drifters and pollutants will go. A Story Map of the Bay Drift study was developed to compliment the lesson: https://arcg.is/1e0T40.
A free downloadable copy of “Bay Drift: Tracking Ocean Pollution” is available here.
Visit the dedicated Bay Drift page on the CARTHE website to learn more about the study behind the lesson.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team released a tip sheet that discusses how academic researchers can become more familiar with priority oil spill research needs and with protocols for collecting data during response activities.
Using feedback from academic, industry, and response representatives,
the publication offers specific recommendations for actions that
academic researchers can take prior to a spill event so that they can
better meet the response community’s needs as a spill unfolds.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team
synthesizes peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general
audiences, particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast.
Sea Grant offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United
States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Oil Spill Cleanup Challenge lesson plan and activity are designed to get students thinking about oil in the ocean, especially the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster and the challenge of oil spill response. The activity is appropriate for a wide range of ages and uses a water-filled tray to represent the Gulf of Mexico and a set of easy-to-find materials that students can use to “respond” to the spill.
Note: Several versions of this activity are available online. The activity presented by the Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf (ECOGIG) consortium is adapted from a version developed by Cynthia Cudaback and was implemented by ECOGIG outreach staff during 2016-2018 summer camps and classroom visits.
Six coloring sheets depict some of the diverse sea creatures that researchers encountered during research cruises.
These coloring sheets were developed in partnership with Whale Times, Inc. for a series of summer camps based on Deep-Pelagic Nekton Dynamics (DEEPEND) consortium research called Creep into the DEEPEND.
There are hundreds of deep-pelagic fish species in the Gulf of Mexico, and we are continuously learning about their diversity and behaviors. These short videos, hosted by kid’s science mascot Squirt the Squid, feature research into the diverse and fascinating deep-sea creatures inhabiting the Gulf of Mexico.
Video 1: Cephalopods
Join Squirt as he discusses different cephalopod species in the Gulf of Mexico.
Video 2: Counter-Illumination
Squirt teaches kids about counter-illumination, a natural camouflage strategy in which marine animals produce light that matches the brightness and wavelength of their surroundings, helping them to avoid predators.
Video 3: Dragonfish
Squirt teaches kids about dragonfish, a type of small bioluminescent deep-sea predator that lives in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team is pleased to announce and extend an invitation to attend Gulf Coast state events that will highlight GoMRI contributions to research, recovery, and resilience from a state-based perspective. Each event features scientists affiliated with their respective state who are involved with GoMRI research as well as members of the GoMRI Research Board and administration.
Established in response to the Deepwater Horizon incident, GoMRI has led an independent, 10-year, $500 million research program
focused on the Gulf of Mexico, which has traditionally been
underfunded, to study the effect of oil spills on the environment and
public health. As the GoMRI program nears its conclusion, focus has
turned to its legacy and the application of knowledge accrued to the long-term environmental health of the Gulf of Mexico.
Please join us as the Sea Grant oil spill outreach team hosts these
state events, which can be viewed on Zoom or via Facebook Live. More
details are provided below and also available at https://gulfseagrant.org/celebrating-gomri-around-the-gulf/.
Save the Date! Texas – September 25, Florida – October 16, Alabama – October 23, Mississippi – October 29, Louisiana – November 10.
GoMRI and Texas: Celebration of a 10-year partnership
September 25, 10 am-12:30 pm CDT/11-1:30 EDT Register here to watch on Zoom or via Facebook Live.
Questions? Please contact Dani Bailey with Texas Sea Grant at danielle.bailey@exchange.tamu.edu or 361.825.6215.
Speakers and panelists
Rita Colwell, Chair of the GoMRI Research Board
Laura Bowie, Executive Director, Gulf of Mexico Alliance
Chuck Wilson, GoMRI Chief Scientific Officer
Raymond L. Orbach, GoMRI Research Board member from the state of Texas, The University of Texas at Austin
Larry McKinney, Senior Executive Director of Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi
Antonietta Quigg, Senior Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, Texas A&M University Galveston
James Gibeaut, Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (GRIIDC), Texas A&M University Corpus Christi
Tony Wood, Director of the National Spill Control School, Corpus Christi
Steve Buschang, Director of Research and Development/ Scientific Support Coordinator, Texas General Land Office
Pamela Plotkin, Executive Director, Texas Sea Grant
Ten years of GoMRI Science: Honoring discoveries, contributions, and legacies in Florida
October 16, 2020, 12–3 pm CDT/1-4 EDT. Register here to watch on Zoom or via Facebook Live.
Questions? Please contact Monica Wilson with UF/IFAS Florida Sea Grant at monicawilson447@ufl.edu or 727.776.0831.
Speakers
Rita Colwell, Chair of the GoMRI Research Board
Laura Bowie, Executive Director, Gulf of Mexico Alliance
Chuck Wilson, GoMRI Chief Scientific Officer
William Hogarth, GoMRI Research Board member from the state of Florida, Florida Institute of Oceanography
Richard Dodge, GoMRI Research Board member from the state of Florida, Nova Southeastern University
Steve Murawski, University of South Florida
Tamay Ozgokmen, University of Miami
Tracey Sutton, Nova Southeastern University
Martin Grosell, University of Miami
Timyn Rice, Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
Ten years of discovery: Celebrating the legacy of GoMRI in Alabama
October 23,2020, Reception 6 pm CDT/7 EDT, Program 6:30-8:30/7:30-9:30
The Lodge at Gulf State Park, Gulf Shores, AL. Register here to attend in person or remotely on Zoom/via Facebook Live.
Questions? Please contact Missy Partyka with Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium at m.partyka@auburn.edu or 251.348.5436.
Speakers and panelists
Rita Colwell, GoMRI Research Board Chair
Laura Bowie, Executive Director of GOMA
Chuck Wilson, GoMRI Chief Scientific Officer
Tina Miller-Way, Chair of Discovery Hall Programs, Dauphin Island Sea Lab
Patricia Sobecky, University of Alabama
Nikaela Flournoy, GoMRI Scholar, University of Alabama
Ruth Carmichael, Dauphin Island Sea Lab
Carl Cloyed, Dauphin Island Sea Lab
Carl Edmiston, US Coast Guard (retired)
A salute to the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative’s contribution to the state of science in Mississippi
October 29, 1-3 pm CDT/2-4 EDT. Register here to watch on Zoom or via Facebook Live.
Questions? Contact Tara Skelton at tara.skelton@usm.edu or 228.327.5284.
Speakers and panelists
Rita Colwell, Chair of the GoMRI Research Board
Laura Bowie, Executive Director, Gulf of Mexico Alliance
Chuck Wilson, GoMRI Chief Scientific Officer
David Shaw, GoMRI Research Board member from the state of Mississippi, Mississippi State University
Dennis Weisenburg, GoMRI Research Board member from the state of Mississippi, University of Southern Mississippi
LaDon Swann, Executive Director, Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium
Pat Fitzpatrick, Mississippi State University/Texas A & M
Jerry Wiggert, University of Southern Mississippi
Joe Griffitt, University of Southern Mississippi
Jessie Kastler, University of Southern Mississippi
Kemal Combazaglu, University of Southern Mississippi
Stephan O’Brien, Deakin University
Sabrina Parra, Johns Hopkins University
Missy Partyka, Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium /Auburn University
Cheryl Lassitter, NOAA
Ryan Bradley, Mississippi Commercial Fisheries United, Inc.
Commemorating 10 years of GoMRI science in Louisiana
November 10, 2020, 2-4 pm CST/3-5 EST Register here to watch on Zoom or via Facebook Live.
Questions? Please contact Emily Maung-Douglass with Louisiana Sea Grant at edouglass@lsu.edu or 225.578.9926.
Speakers and panelists
Rita Colwell, Chair of the GoMRI Research Board
Laura Bowie, Executive Director, Gulf of Mexico Alliance
Chuck Wilson, GoMRI Chief Scientific Officer
Richard Shaw, GoMRI Research Board member from the state of Louisiana, Louisiana State University
Debi Benoit, GoMRI Research Board member from the state of Louisiana, Nicholls State University
Stephen Sempier, Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant
Emily Maung-Douglass, Louisiana Sea Grant
Vijay John, Consortium for the Molecular Engineering of Dispersant Systems (C-MEDS), Tulane University
Melissa Finucane, Consortium for Resilient Gulf Communities (CRGC), RAND Corporation
Nancy Rabalais, Coastal Waters Consortium (CWC), Louisiana State University
Natalia Sidorovskaia, Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center-Gulf
Ecological Monitoring & Modeling (LADC-GEMM), University of
Louisiana at Lafayette
Additionally featuring:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality
Clean Gulf Associates
By Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact maggied@ngi.msstate.edu with questions or comments.
************
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
These short video clips depict the the diverse research methods that researchers use to examine how oil affects ecologically and economically important fish species.
Broodstock Capture (1:34)
This clip takes viewers aboard the University of Miami Rosenstiel School’s Yellowfin boat for a mahi mahi broodstock capture trip in the Florida Straits. All mahi mahi that are captured are brought to the University of Miami Experimental Hatchery. Wild-caught broodstock typically begin spawning regularly after an acclimation period of around two weeks, and their offspring are raised to various life stages (larval, juvenile, adult) for researchers to use in experiments examining how the Deepwater Horizon oil spill affected mahi mahi.
Broodstock Transfer (0:51)
This video depicts how RECOVER scientists safely and efficiently move wild-caught mahi mahi from the acclimation tanks to their permanent home in the spawning and maturation tanks. RECOVER scientists’ research requires facilities like the Hatchery that allow them to do this successfully. Once transferred to these tanks, the male and female mahi mahi broodstock begin to spawn regularly.
Creating Oil Dilutions (0:57)
This video provides a behind-the-scenes look into how RECOVER scientists create the oil dilutions used to study the impacts of crude oil on mahi mahi and red drum in the lab. RECOVER scientist Dr. Christina Pasparakis explains that oil dilutions are created in seawater using oil sampled from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, so that their research can parallel conditions present during the spill.
Zebrafish Fluorescence (0:55)
This video features RECOVER researcher Yadong Wang, who exposes zebrafish (a model organism for scientific research) to green and red flourscence proteins. When hit with light, the proteins fluoresce or emit a red and green light from their red blood cells and blood vessels, respectively. RECOVER researchers use this technique to observe vessel development in fish and hope to use this method in the future to study how oil impacts blood vessel formation in mahi mahi and red drum.
Deepwater Horizon oil impacted over 1,700 km of Gulf of
Mexico coastline and prompted 89 beach closures, largely due to
uncertainty about health risks associated with oil contamination.
Compared to adults, children spend more time in the sand when at the
beach and touch their face more often, increasing potential exposure to
contaminants through skin contact or ingestion. Tanu Altomare
analyzed data quantifying children’s beach behaviors to inform a model
evaluating health risks to young children when playing on
oil-contaminated beaches. Responders can use the model’s assessments
when making decisions about beach closures and communicating risks to
the public when future pollutant events happen.
When Tanu was a microbiology student at the University of
Houston-Downtown, a guest lecturer discussed environmental risk
assessments of pollutants in or near residential homes. Tanu had been
conducting laboratory experiments but wondered if the long stretches
without human interaction were right for her. By contrast, the
lecturer’s work that combined environmental science, epidemiology, and
social and behavioral science fascinated her.
While researching graduate schools, Tanu toured the School of Public
Health at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and
subsequently accepted a graduate research position toward a Master of
Public Health. She worked closely with Dr. Kristina Mena
investigating the factors influencing microbial load (the number and
type of microorganisms contaminating a water body) in two Galveston Bay
marinas and hoped to complete a doctorate under her mentorship. Tanu
described her research interests to Dr. Mena, who recommended the
GoMRI-funded BEACHES project exploring how interactions between people’s
behavior and the environment influence their health – concepts that
first got Tanu interested in public health.
“I’ve lived in Houston for nearly 20 years, and I’ve been present for
a variety of natural and man-made disasters, including Hurricane Harvey
and the Deepwater Horizon spill,” said Tanu. “I’ve seen
firsthand how those events affected my community, so I’ve always had a
personal stake in better understanding the effects of disaster and
behavior on health and wellbeing.”
Her Work
The BEACHES team is developing an assessment platform that will
provide health risk information on children playing at oil-contaminated
beaches. The model currently uses benchmarks established in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Exposure Factors Handbook
to determine health risk, but real-time data will help refine these
benchmarks so that they are applicable to children of different ages,
genders, and demographics. Tanu and her fellow BEACHES researchers video
recorded children (with guardian permission) playing in Florida and
Texas beach sands over a ten-day period. The team monitored behaviors
that would affect children’s exposure risks, especially how often they
touched their mouths, the frequency and length of time they spent in
water and sand, and how much sand stuck to their hands and bodies when
their skin was wet, dry, or had sunscreen on it.
Tanu analyzed the video data using a risk assessment software called
Crystal Ball, which returns a best-case, worst-case, and most likely
outcome for a scenario. Her preliminary analyses suggest that exposure
frequency (how many days per year children go to the beach) had the
greatest influence on health risk estimates out of the factors analyzed
so far. This observation supports the expectation that factors with a
wide range of variability like exposure frequency will influence risk
estimates more strongly than variables like body weight or skin surface
area, which show little fluctuation among children. However, she is
eager to see how estimates change once data on soil intake rate (oral
exposure), adherence factor (skin exposure), and inhalation rate are
incorporated into the model.
“I think this model will be especially useful for agencies involved
in communicating advisories and other health information to the public.
Instead of blanket advisories, they can provide a more thorough
explanation of how and why the public should or should not avoid certain
beach-related activities following a disaster event,” said Tanu. “For
example, [the observations about exposure frequency] can be valuable for
families living in Gulf communities, because they tend to visit beaches
more often than families who only go once or twice a year.”
Her Learning
Working with an interdisciplinary group showed Tanu how real-world
science unfolds, with researchers relying on each other to fill in
different pieces of a larger puzzle. A memorable moment for Tanu was
hearing Dr. Alesia Ferguson’s
observations about their video recordings, who commented that children
behaved differently depending on if their mother, father, or siblings
were present and that there were behavioral trends for children of
different racial backgrounds. “At that moment, the multitude of factors
that play into how a person interacts with their environment really hit
home,” said Tanu. “Sometimes, I get narrowly focused on the scientific
parts of the equations, like the chemical concentrations, but there is a
human factor that has a profound effect on health outcomes.”
As a member of the GoMRI community, Tanu interacted with an extensive
network of researchers, policymakers, and industry leaders. When she
began her doctoral research, Tanu anticipated that her advisor would be
her main mentoring resource, but she also received feedback from many
GoMRI community members. She attended a graduate student luncheon at the
2020 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science Conference,
where she engaged with fellow students and experts from diverse fields.
“The leaders of GoMRI have taught me a lot of what it means to be a
researcher and collaborator,” she said. “The most important piece of
advice I received at the luncheon was to always be open to new projects
and opportunities, because it opens up so many new avenues for research
and networking.”
Tanu also learned the importance of talking with her advisor about
the future, even when she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. “A lot of
students know they want to pursue a career in science but don’t know all
their options, and that can be frustrating,” she said. “I had a vague,
almost incoherent idea what I was interested in, but Dr. Mena helped me
form a concrete idea. She took my interests and connected it to an
awesome project!”
Tanu completed her Public Health doctorate and is seeking
opportunities where she can continue working with the marine environment
and children’s health.
Praise for Tanu
Dr. Mena described Tanu as an engaging student and a forward-thinking
researcher, who asks the right questions about things that others may
overlook. “Tanu was an integral part of the field work for this study as
well as the risk assessment component,” she said. “She was not only a
remarkable student, but she is also an exceptional person. I look
forward to hearing about her future contributions.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Tanu Altomare and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal published an article that describes
some of the discoveries that scientists have made about microbes in the
Gulf of Mexico. Following Deepwater Horizon, researchers were armed with new genomic tools that enabled them to study marine microbes at sea, in their environment.
Funded by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI), these
scientists discovered how diverse, specialized, and adaptive microbes
can be. For example, some bacteria can thrive when crude oil is present
and even seek it out. When they produce detergent-like substances into
the oil, these bacteria can break it into small droplets, effectively
serving as a natural oil dispersant.
By Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact maggied@ngi.msstate.edu with questions or comments.
************
GoMRI and the Smithsonian have a partnership to enhance oil spill science content on the Ocean Portal website.
The GoMRI is a 10-year independent research program established to
study the effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon
releases on the environment and public health, as well as to develop
improved spill mitigation, oil detection, characterization and
remediation technologies. An independent and academic 20-member
Research Board makes the funding and research direction decisions to
ensure the intellectual quality, effectiveness and academic independence
of the GoMRI research. All research data, findings and publications
will be made publicly available. The program was established through a
$500 million financial commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Hydrocarbons from oil slicks floating on the ocean’s surface can be aerosolized by evaporation, breaking waves and bursting bubbles.
Variations in sea, wave, and atmospheric conditions can significantly
influence the transport and dynamics of these aerosolized oil droplets.
Accurate predictions of where and how far aerosolized oil pollutants
will go can help us better understand potential human health impacts
from oil spills, which was a concern during Deepwater Horizon.
Yajat Pandya collects and analyzes in situ wind,
wave, and atmospheric data to help improve our understanding of how the
marine atmospheric boundary layer, where the atmosphere meets and
interacts with the ocean, affects how aerosolized oil droplets travel.
His findings will help improve numerical Large-Eddy Simulation (LES)
predictions of aerosolized oil droplets’ evolution from sea to coast,
especially how different atmospheric and sea-wave conditions drive
aerosols’ distribution and concentration as they travel.
Yajat’s interest in fluid flows and mathematics as a teenager led him
to pursue a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering at the Indian
Institute of Technology Kharagpur. As an undergraduate, he gained
experience working with experimental fluid flows and focused his thesis
project on small-scale wind turbines, which introduced him to complex
atmospheric boundary layer flows. While exploring potential doctoral
programs, he discovered that Dr. Giacomo Valerio Iungo
was leading the Wind, Fluids, and Experiments (WindFluX) laboratory at
the University of Texas at Dallas and had received a GoMRI-funded grant
to investigate aerosolized oil transport. Yajat was excited to join Dr.
Iungo’s lab team as a doctoral student.
“From a fluid dynamics perspective, anthropogenic large-scale
atmospheric events are not understood well enough to develop confidence
in predicting the harmful effects,” said Yajat. “The unfortunate Deepwater Horizon
spill event provided me an opportunity to learn and share my
understanding of oil droplets emerging from the coastal regions into the
air and their transport via atmospheric motions.”
His Work
Yajat uses Doppler Wind LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to
measure wind speed and aerosol backscatter within 2 km of its deployment
location to determine aerosol transport by turbulent atmospheric flows.
He participated in a five-month deployment of his team’s Halo Photonics
LiDAR and a sonic anemometer (an instrument that measures instantaneous
wind speed) from the coast of Galveston, Texas. Collaborating with
Galveston Island State Park, their team set up an experimental site 100 m
from shore that allowed them to remotely access and monitor the
equipment from their Dallas laboratory. They collected measurements of
wind speeds, wave conditions, atmospheric stability, and weather
conditions from November 2018 to April 2019. Multiple LiDAR scanning
procedures provided an overview of local wind and aerosol trends, which
helped the team design specific scans to capture turbulent flow in the
marine atmospheric boundary layer. These scans included determining the
vertical and horizontal spatial distribution of aerosol plumes,
characterizing the variability of wind speed and aerosol concentration
with high-frequency resolution, and characterizing features of the
boundary layer profile.
Yajat observed that winds moving from sea to land exhibited
significantly higher backscatter than winds moving from land to sea,
suggesting that marine aerosols travel mainly toward the coastline. In
winds from sea to land with speeds greater than 10 meters per second,
aerosol plumes in the surf zone rose as high as 50 m above sea level,
indicating the occurrence of unexpected aerosol buoyancy and turbulent
diffusion (the mixing and dispersion of aerosol plumes emerging from the
sea surface). Yajat applied fundamental flow theories to the data and
found that the total aerodynamic roughness length (a parameter
quantifying sea surface perturbation based on wind activity) that the
instruments measured was significantly higher than existing open-sea
aerodynamic roughness models predicted. The aerodynamic roughness regime
significantly affects predictions of the turbulent scales of a boundary
layer flow. In this case, the model’s underestimation of roughness may
explain the inaccuracy in predicting how aerosols disperse in the
coastal zone.
“This observation has led us to believe that there might be a
dominant drag related to the roughness component, which is in turn
dependent on implicit wind-wave processes,” explained Yajat.
“Characterizing aerodynamic roughness length will help to provide
more-efficient turbulent flow parameters for LES predictions of
aerosol-particle transport.”
Next, Yajat will examine the correlation between atmospheric
turbulence (small-scale, chaotic wind motions that vary in speed and
direction) and aerosol backscatter. Based on a preliminary assessment of
the data, he expects to find an inverse correlation between elevated
wind turbulence and elevated aerosol concentrations. If confirmed by the
research, he can use this correlation to create a model that can
predict real-time aerosol structures in the marine boundary layer under
varying wind speeds, wave heights, and atmospheric stratification.
His Learning
Dr. Iungo helped familiarize Yajat with the functionality and
experimental procedures of the LiDAR and other analytical instruments
and taught him data analysis techniques that focus on finding new
insights. “One highlight of my research experience so far was realizing
the deviation of my dataset from the known open-sea models and how much
more we have to learn and solve,” said Yajat. While Dr. Iungo taught
Yajat that scientific research often reveals valuable questions, whose
answers can help strengthen one’s findings, he also emphasized the
importance of not allowing new questions to distract from the main
research goal.
“I feel special and blessed to be a part of a noble initiative aimed
at minimizing the effects of devastating anthropogenic events like oil
spills and marine pollution,” said Yajat. “The research has a unique
purpose because everyone in the GoMRI community is motivated to save and
preserve the ecosystem. As an experimentalist, it is particularly
uplifting to see the incredible experimental efforts put forth by GoMRI
researchers.”
Yajat hopes to find a research career where he can continue
contributing to our understanding of aerosol turbulence under
large-scale environmental events. He feels that successful scientific
research results from training the curious part of your mind to be more
focused and disciplined. “Many supplementary skills like problem solving
and critical thinking are developed in the pursuit of your research
goal,” he said. “Pushing the limits of human knowledge in your own
unique way is fun and oddly satisfying!”
Praise for Yajat
Dr. Iungo reflected on Yajat’s research achievements, highlighting
his significant contributions to the team’s LiDAR experiment in
Galveston Island State Park. Yajat’s collaboration with his WindFluX lab
mates resulted in a successful deployment of the mobile LiDAR station
and the completely remote operation of their instruments. “I am very
confident that his work will lead to new modeling strategies for
predictions of marine aerosol concentration in the marine atmospheric
boundary layer,” said Dr. Iungo.
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Yajat Pandya and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
There is now a novel way to reach audiences and help spark their
interest in ocean science that involves the very popular world of video
gaming. Launched by E-Line Media in conjunction with the BBC and
researchers involved with their Blue Planet II series, the single-player narrative adventure Beyond Blue takes players deep into our ocean’s mysterious and fascinating world.
Beyond Blue video game players join a research team that
uses groundbreaking technologies to see, hear, and interact with the
ocean through the eyes of Mirai, a deep-sea explorer and scientist who
dives deep to learn more about the vibrant and otherworldly underwater
environments. Samantha Joye,
Regents Professor at the University of Georgia and Director of the
ECOGIG consortium, served as a consultant during the development of this
new gaming experience that explores the deep ocean.
“Beyond Blue is more than a video game,” explained Joye,
“It’s an immersive tour through a fascinating and magical world that
will leave you wanting to know more — and to do more. The game will
motivate all players to learn more about the ocean and for some, playing
will inspire engagement in ocean advocacy. Surely some players will be
motivated to pursue a career in ocean science.”
How popular are video games? More than 75% of Americans have a gamer
in their household and 70% of American families have a child who plays
video games, according to a 2019 report released by the Entertainment Software Association.
E-Line Media, who also published the game Never Alone(Kisima Ingitchuna)
that introduces players to little-known tales of native Alaskan
culture, wants people to start thinking about the world beyond what they
see. The company partnered with BBC Studios (developers of the
acclaimed Blue Planet II), OceanX Media (world-class game makers), and some of science’s leading ocean experts to craft an experience through Beyond Blue that reflects the wonder and mystery of the deep ocean.
Beyond Blue features
Exploration and adventure within an untouched world;
A captivating and entertaining soundtrack featuring an original
score and music from Miles Davis, The Flaming Lips, The Edisons, and
more; and
Sixteen unique mini-documentaries called Ocean Insights that feature original footage and interviews with science’s leading ocean experts.
“Working with the E-Line team to ideate gaming scenarios and imagine
futuristic ocean science technologies was an incredible and rewarding
experience,” Joye said. “And this is only the beginning – Mirai and her
team have a lot more exploring to do!”
View this trailer of the Beyond Blue video game:
Listen as scientists Samantha Joye, David Gruber, and Sylvia Earle talk about their participation as consultants during the Beyond Blue development and their fascination with the ocean at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GupPSblAxzo&feature=youtu.be
The Beyond Blue video game uses several platforms (PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Apple Arcade) and is available for purchase ($19.99 USD) at https://beyondbluegame.com/.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team a new report that draws from five workshops hosted by the Team where emergency responders and oil spill science researchers from around the Gulf of Mexico gathered to learn from one another. Workshop attendees discussed the role of academia in oil spill response, the response sector’s contributions to research, and challenges and barriers to and solutions for working collaboratively. The workshop summary report is Fostering Emergency Responder and University Researcher Collaboration.
Attendees identified the lack of funding as the biggest challenge and
barrier to collaboratively working with one another. There are
diminished resources between major spills for research and for
trainings, workshops, and events that bring these groups together. The
next biggest challenge participants identified was lack of communication
between the groups who operate under different timelines and
priorities.
Responders would like to see scientists attend local Area Committee
Meetings (ACMs) held by regional US Coast Guard Sectors, but it would
need to be a continuous effort by scientists so that a trusted
relationship is ongoing outside of actual spill response. Responders
want to know about scientific findings related to oil spills and would
like scientists to help communicate that with them and the public in a
transparent manner.
Academic scientists want responders to share their data with the
academic research community, particularly where there are known data and
knowledge gaps so that scientists could plan projects to address those
gaps. Scientists would like to attend industry and response organization
trainings and drills so that they can learn about protocols and
certifications needed to participate in response efforts.
Solutions that the groups offered included making research data, such
as oceanographic surveys, easily available and for researchers to share
published findings with industry members, state and local agency
employees, and elected officials for developing response plans. The
group supported meetings that provided opportunities for responders and
researchers to gather, interact, and continue communications and to
share research, data, and ideas.
The workshop report provides background information, such as
pre-workshop surveys that guided workshop development, how the workshops
were conducted (started in 2015 across the five US Gulf States), and
details about discussions and results.
“The original workshop was so well-received by the researchers and
responders in attendance we decided to make it into a Gulf-wide series,”
said physical oceanographer Monica Wilson who is the Florida lead for
the Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team. “These workshops provided a place
for these two groups to come together and have a conversation about
future collaborations. The information that was gathered from all those
in attendance is a steppingstone in improving these relationships and
keep these connections growing.”
This work was made possible in part by grants from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to the Sea Grant Oil Spill and Outreach Team
and from the Sea Grant Programs in Texas, Louisiana,
Mississippi-Alabama, and Florida. Additional support came from the
Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve, Mississippi State
University Coastal Research and Extension Center, NOAA Disaster Response
Center, and Florida Fish and Wildlife Institute.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative
(GoMRI) is a 10-year independent research program established to study
the effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases
on the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved
spill mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit
http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Marine protists are single-celled planktonic creatures that form the
base of the marine food web and perform important ecosystem services,
including driving photosynthesis and the carbon and nitrogen cycles.
Protist communities include energy-producing organisms, such as
phytoplankton, that use sunlight or chemical reactions to generate their
own food. Protists also include predators, such as microzooplankton,
that eat the energy-producing protists.
After Deepwater Horizon,research found
that spilled oil significantly lowered phytoplankton abundance and
shifted the community species composition from ciliates and
phytoflagellates to diatoms and cyanobacteria. Researchers also observed
that chemically dispersed oil reduced the abundance of certain ciliate
microzooplankton species that feed on energy-producing protists.
Understanding how concurrent oil spill effects and altered predator-prey
interactions influence these bacterial communities could help spill
responders and ecosystem managers anticipate algal blooms and food web
changes.
Chi Hung “Charles” Tang
conducts oil exposure experiments on protistan predators and producers
to examine how oil and dispersant affect their ability to carry out
ecological functions and support the food chain. His findings will help
determine the oil or dispersant concentrations that impact the growth
and grazing interactions of Gulf of Mexico protist communities.
As a biology undergraduate student at the Chinese University of Hong
Kong, Charles conducted a senior research project that investigated the
changing temporal and spatial patterns in phytoplankton community
composition across a southern China estuary. Charles measured the
physicochemical conditions of seawater, collected phytoplankton samples,
and used statistical analysis to examine environmental drivers, which
deepened his interest in the ecology of planktonic organisms.
Charles completed a biology master’s degree at the Chinese University
of Hong Kong and began searching for a Ph.D. program studying
phytoplankton and microzooplankton ecology. He read about Dr. Ed Buskey’s
research on the relationship between Texas brown tides (algal blooms)
and zooplankton grazing and asked Dr. Buskey about potential graduate
research opportunities. Dr. Buskey felt that the GoMRI-funded oil spill
research that he and his team were conducting was a perfect fit for
Charles and would allow him to develop his own research focus. Charles
joined Dr. Buskey’s lab as a graduate researcher investigating oil’s
influence on microzooplankton grazing.
His Work
Charles began his research using outdoor mesocosm experiments that
exposed natural protist communities containing both producers
(phytoplankton) and predators (microzooplankton) to dispersed crude oil.
He determined rates of producer growth and predator grazing after two
and six days of exposure. While microzooplankton’s grazing habits
consumed ~40-60% of the energy that producers generated daily under
normal conditions, he observed reductions in producer growth and
predator grazing after two days of exposure. After six days, however, he
observed recovery in producer growth but a continued reduction in
predator grazing, suggesting that predator communities may be more
susceptible to oil exposure than producers.
“My findings suggest that, because oil impacts their natural
predators more severely, the less-susceptible phytoplankton producers
may have a chance of unchecked proliferation, which could potentially
lead to algal blooms under certain conditions,” explained Charles.
“Additionally, the reduced feeding and, therefore, reduced growth of the
protistan predator community could lead to reduced food sources for
organisms at higher trophic levels, such as larger zooplankton, larval
fish, and bivalves.”
Charles’s current experiments examine how different oil and
dispersant concentrations affect the population growth of both producers
and the ingestion rate of predators and the prey. He conducts
laboratory experiments that incubate protistan predators and producers
separately under short- (24-hour) and long-term (days) exposure to
environmentally realistic oil and dispersant concentrations that
resemble conditions near the sea surface following an oil spill. His
short-term experiments examine how crude oil alone, dispersant alone,
and crude oil plus dispersant (20:1 oil to dispersant, the application ratio used during Deepwater Horizon)
affect protistan predator grazing. Long-term experiments examine how
crude oil plus dispersant concentrations ranging from 1 to 30 µL/L
(reflecting conditions observed following Deepwater Horizon) affected the population growth of predators and producers.
Charles uses a compound microscope to observe prey ingestion and
population growth and estimate the median inhibitory concentration (IC50,
the concentration that causes a 50% drop in protistan population
growth) of chemically dispersed crude oil for protistan species, which
reflects their sensitivity to oil pollutants. He also applies DNA
sequencing to determine which microorganisms are present in the water
samples at the different time points, which can help him characterize
how protistan predators feed on producers in oil-polluted water. “Since
producers can be very tiny and morphologically indistinguishable, DNA
sequencing can help identify what types of bacteria are present in
oil-loaded seawater,” explained Charles. “Although bacterial producers
are subject to grazing by small protistan predators, some producers can
consume carbon and other components from biodegraded oil as an
alternative food source and can therefore grow rapidly when oil is
spilled in the water column.”
Charles is still collecting and analyzing his data, but his
preliminary results suggest that grazing by protistan predators was
significantly reduced at high concentrations of chemically dispersed
crude oil (10 µL/L) when compared to control treatments. He hopes that
his findings provide key evidence that will help us better understand
the consequences of oil spills on marine ecosystems.
His Learning
Charles speculates that he may not have been able to conduct his
self-developed experiments without Dr. Buskey’s mentorship and financial
support. Dr. Buskey’s support for Charles’s projects taught Charles
that scientific research is greater than one researcher and requires a
dedicated and collaborative team. He experienced this collaboration on a
larger scale at the annual Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem
Science conference, where he met other GoMRI scientists to exchange
ideas and identify new research methods. “I share the values of the
GoMRI science community to improve our ability to understand, respond
to, and mitigate the problems caused by petroleum pollution,” he said.
“The conference is a good opportunity for us to collaborate and work
together towards our goals.” He plans to seek a postdoctoral position,
so that he can continue conducting marine science research.
Praise for Charles
Dr. Buskey explained that Charles’s hard-working personality shone
when he faced and successfully worked through several challenges beyond
his control, including the laboratory’s closures following Hurricane
Harvey in 2017 and the ongoing COVID-19 response. Dr. Buskey said, “We
recently learned that Charles is a recipient of the highly competitive
Continuing Fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin Graduate
School for summer 2020. Congratulations, Charles!”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Charles Tang and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the DROPPS website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
These videos were developed to demonstrate research aboard the E/V Nautilus.
ECOGIG in 60 Seconds
Dr. Katy Croff Bell, Chief Scientist of the EV Nautilus crew, explains the mission of ECOGIG.
Imaging Deep-Water Corals (Nautilus Live)
As part of the ECOGIG project, the E/V Nautilus made its way to the site of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill to image affected corals. Using the ROV Hercules’ BEAST CAM, the scientists are able to capture extremely high resolution pictures. These pictures will be used to show change over time and growth rate.
ECOGIG and EV Nautilus Inspire Kids with ROVs
“It was really cool, because I want to be marine biologist when I grow older. So being able to see this and experience the boat and the submarines and how to work them and stuff like that, it was eye awakening. I really want to do this now.” As the Nautilus prepared to launch for a corals research cruise, led by Dr. Chuck Fisher, nearly 200-members of the Boys and Girls Clubs walked on deck to see how the remotely operated vehicles are used for deep sea research. They also built and tested their own miniature ROVs.
Hydrocarbon-degrading microbes living in ocean environments consumed and metabolized oil droplets following Deepwater Horizon, which significantly influenced the oil’s fate in the Gulf of Mexico.
The ocean has layers of varying densities resulting from temperature or
salinity gradients that can affect the motion of oil droplets and
swimming microbes. Understanding the hydrodynamics of droplets and
swimming microbes as they encounter these ocean layers is vital to
understanding the biodegradation processes that follow an oil spill.
Rajat Dandekar
uses mathematical theory to derive how stratified ocean environments
affect the motion of flagellated organisms (microbes that move using a
whip-like appendage called a flagella) and the movement of floating
particles such as oil droplets. His research will improve our
understanding about how stratified ocean environments influence the
transport of oil droplets and microbial degradation processes.
During his childhood in Pune, India, Rajat discovered that he could
use mathematics and a simple pen and paper to make logical deductions
about nature. He recalls learning about the golden ratio and Fibonacci
sequence in flowers and plants, finding satisfaction in applying
mathematical principles to the natural world. He completed a Bachelor of
Technology in Engineering Design and Master of Technology in Automotive
Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, where he was
introduced to fluid dynamics. “I learned that physical phenomena
involving fluid motion can be understood by reducing their physics to a
set of equations and then solving those equations,” he said. “The
realization that mathematics, which already fascinated me, could be used
to study real-world problems got me more interested in the field of
fluid dynamics.”
Rajat began researching fluid dynamics Ph.D. programs and read
several research papers detailing complex flow experiments conducted by Dr. Arezoo Ardekani
at Purdue University. Dr. Ardekani’s lab team combined theoretical and
computational techniques to investigate the motion of swimming
microorganisms and transport of particles and droplets in aquatic
environments. Rajat was intrigued by the group’s methods and joined Dr.
Ardekani’s team conducting GoMRI-funded research investigating how
oil-water interfaces affect marine bacteria’s motility as they move
towards and attach to dispersed oil.
His Work
To understand Rajat’s research, it’s helpful to start with how
microorganisms swim. “Humans swim by pushing through water with their
body. However, microorganisms are typically very small and cannot exert
such inertial forces on the fluid,” he explained. “Instead, these
organisms have evolved so that they can propel themselves through ocean
and lake environments. For example, some organisms rhythmically beat
their flagella, while some synchronize cilia on their surface in such a
way that the organism is able to move itself.”
Rajat focused first on understanding how stratified ocean
environments affected flagellated organisms’ speed and energy
consumption. He spent a semester conducting a literature review and
learning more-nuanced mathematical techniques. He then derived equations
using a mathematical technique called perturbation theory, which
incorporated the complex Navier-Stokes equations that describe fluid
motion into his calculations of flagellated organisms’ movement. He
observed that density variations in the ocean significantly reduced
flagellated organisms’ speed and caused them to consume more energy
while swimming.
Rajat turned his focus next to calculating the transport of particles
in stratified oceans, including their rotation and if they experience
force and torque. He utilized his understanding of perturbation theory
to develop a mathematical solution for calculating these particles’
rotation and the force and torque they experience in aquatic
environments. “The theory can be applied for analyzing the motion of
particles with any arbitrary shape [such as oil droplets],” explained
Rajat. “An important application [of the theory] is the motion of
droplets in aquatic environments, which can be used to understand oil
droplets’ motion during an oil spill.”
Rajat’s theory revealed that even weak density variation generated
more drag on particles than did fluid with a constant density. His
calculations indicate that skew particles (particles that are highly
deformed and asymmetric) experience hydrodynamic torque and rotate due
to density stratification while non-skew particles (particles with
shapes including spheres, ellipses, cubes, and rods) do not. He and his
colleagues are now applying this theory to oil droplets (which can be
skew or non-skew depending on their shape) to better understand their
movement in stratified oceans.
His Learning
The friendly and motivating atmosphere in Dr. Ardekani’s lab created a
positive environment that helped Rajat grow as a researcher and
individual. He recalled having stimulating discussions with lab members
about the research and each other’s philosophies and receiving
encouragement from Dr. Ardekani to keep improving the research’s quality
without stopping too early. Rajat further learned the value of
discussing research with experts and other graduate students in the
field when he presented his research at the 2019 American Physical
Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics Annual Meeting. His conference
experience motivated him to pursue the next phase of his research:
understanding the motion of flagellated microorganisms in heterogeneous
media.
Rajat hopes to continue conducting research on exciting issues. “Many
times, you are unsure whether the problem you are looking at is
solvable with the scientific means at your disposal,” he said. “I am
learning to embrace the uncertainty associated with conducting
research.”
Praise for Rajat
Dr. Ardekani praised Rajat’s creativity, dedication, innovation, and
theoretical skillset and described him as a brilliant student. She
explained that Rajat’s research has made important contributions to the
field of fluid dynamics by developing theoretical descriptions of
particle transport and motile organisms in different fluid media. “Rajat
joined my group when he started his Ph.D. in the fall of 2018,” she
said. “Since then, he has impressed me in every meeting with his
progress and productivity.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Rajat Dandekar and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Advanced tools are needed to predict oil transport to shorelines or
if it will sink to the seafloor and affect sensitive ecosystems. The Subsurface Oil Simulator (SOSim) model, originally developed by the NOAA Response and Restoration’s Emergency Response Division during Deepwater Horizon,
uses statistics to infer the velocity and dispersion of oil spilled in
the water column and predict oil’s transport. The model was initially
developed to track only sunken oil (oil that has reached the seafloor)
on flat bay bottoms following an instantaneous spill, conditions that
represent only a portion of the Gulf of Mexico environment.
Mary Jacketti
is using field data and bathymetric data to develop computational codes
that will expand the capabilities of the SOSim model so that it can
track sunken oil from instantaneous and continuous spills in bay, river,
coastal, and continental shelf environments. Simulations that
incorporate these areas can help responders locate sunken oil during
emergency spill response.
Mary developed a love for science through her middle school’s annual
science fair. She enjoyed identifying a scientific problem, developing
methods to solve the problem, and analyzing results. During high school,
she often participated in outdoor adventures and became passionate
about the environment. While preparing for college, she realized that
environmental engineering would allow her to use science and mathematics
to develop new ways to lessen human impacts on the environments.
As an environmental engineering undergraduate student at the
University of Miami, Mary served as the treasurer for the Society of
Women Engineers. She participated in the group’s annual Introduce a Girl
to Engineering Day, which taught elementary school girls about diverse
STEM careers. She also participated in a research internship documenting
whale and dolphin behavior for the Cape May Whale Watch and Research
Center. During her internship, she conducted her own research project
assessing water quality of waterbodies in Southern New Jersey. Mary
later volunteered for an EPA-funded project using nanoparticles to
filter antibiotic resistant contaminants out of drinking water.
“My undergraduate experiences showed me that I am passionate about
conducting research that will better the environment and public health. I
also found a great passion advocating for women in STEM fields to help
narrow the gender gap in classrooms and the workplace,” said Mary. “I
hope to be able to conduct research that will stand the test of time,
while also motivating and illuminating the path for young women to
conduct research in STEM.”
After completing her bachelor’s degree, University of Mami professor Dr. James Englehardt
asked Mary if would join his GoMRI-funded research team developing a
model that helps minimize how oil spills impact the environment. Mary
knew she could directly apply skills she learned as an undergraduate
student to improve the way scientists approach emergency oil spill
response. She joined Dr. Englehardt’s lab as a Ph.D. student and is
helping develop code that will allow the SOSim model to more accurately
track sunken oil.
Her Work
Mary explained that her research adds a new component to the team’s efforts to expand the SOSim model capability to track submerged oil (oil suspended in the water column). While the submerged oil model uses output from existing trajectory models (such as the SINTEF Oil Spill Contingency and Response, or OSCAR model)
to identify which ocean layers will likely contain oil, the sunken oil
model she’s working on uses bathymetric data to simulate a selected
area’s seafloor depth. If submerged oil in the area’s water column
eventually sinks, the sunken oil model can predict where it will settle.
Mary dedicated her initial efforts to learning about the Python
coding language and Bayesian statistical theory, which quantitatively
updates predictions as new information becomes available. She began
developing simple modeling code to simulate pollutant location and
concentration and then expanded the code to include sunken oil.
Together, she and Dr. Englehardt developed a strategy to incorporate
bathymetry data into the model with existing field data to inform the
Bayesian statistical methods that infer unknown model parameters,
including oil diffusion and velocity and how many oil patches are on the
seafloor.
“Bathymetry plays a significant role in how the sunken oil will be
transported, since oil will generally follow contours of constant depth,
travelling to and residing in the deeper areas,” Mary said. “Including
bathymetry into the SOSim model will help improve spatial and temporal
maps of relative sunken oil concentrations for use during emergency
response operations.”
Mary validates the new code using available synthetic data (data
generated to help simulate certain conditions not seen in the field
data) and field data from past spills. She generates SOSim hindcasts to
determine if the model can correctly predict the location of the sunken
oil and conducts future simulations to see if the model can provide
reasonable results. Preliminary results showed that the inclusion of
bathymetric data increased the model’s accuracy when predicting sunken
oil’s location and transport. Despite relatively sparse sampling of
sunken oil concentrations, the SOSim model can make viable predictions
using available prior oil spill data to infer oil’s location. Mary
acknowledged that having several days of sampled field data improves the
model’s prediction accuracy.
“We hope that this model will aid responders in locating and tracking
sunken oil [in future spills], resulting in quicker recovery of the oil
from the bottom and minimizing the negative impacts the oil may have,”
she said. “If SOSim is used during emergency response in the future,
field data collected by oil spill responders can be used to further
inform the model.”
Her Learning
Dr. Englehardt’s mentorship taught Mary to approach problems in
increasingly critical ways and appreciate the power of asking questions.
While he encouraged Mary to conduct her research independently and
create her own solutions, he was always available to guide and assist.
She learned that regardless of the research being conducted, scientists
attempt to solve questions and discover new solutions to address
problems.
When the team visited SINTEF Ocean
in Trondheim, Norway, Mary was excited about the opportunity to work
alongside researchers from international institutions. Presenting her
research to these scientists improved her presentation skills and
hearing their reports improved her knowledge about oil spill modeling.
She utilized these skills when presenting her research at the 2020 Gulf
of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science (GoMOSES) Conference. “At the
GoMOSES conference, I was able to attend a graduate student luncheon,
where I discussed my research and future career endeavors with other
scholars and experts in the field,” she said. “I will forever be
grateful for the opportunity GoMRI gave me to conduct research on a
topic I am passionate about, while showcasing my research to others in
the field.”
As GoMRI comes to a close, Mary will continue her graduate student
career through new projects. She plans to find an industry position in
risk analysis and environmental modeling that will help her leave a
lasting, positive impact on the environment, something she feels
passionately about.
Praise for Mary
Dr. Englehardt first noticed Mary when she was a student in his
senior-level solid and hazardous waste engineering course. He recalled
that she consistently performed at the top of her class and had a
positive “team spirit” attitude towards group projects. “When it came
time [for Mary] to devise a course project with her classmate, the
result was inspirational,” he said. “Mary and her partner conceived and
designed a vessel to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that was
at least partially self-propelled, effective, and sustainable. I was
impressed with the design, which they developed almost entirely
independently.”
Mary’s steady nature and self-imposed high standards prompted Dr.
Englehardt to offer her a graduate research position with his team while
she was still an undergraduate student. She continued to perform as a
top student in Englehardt’s graduate courses while simultaneously
battling the steep learning curve associated with her GoMRI research and
completing an independent study developing a new microbial risk
assessment method.
“Mary has mastered the advanced Bayesian probability and statistical
inference skills required for our work and become a facile computational
scientist. I depend on her qualifications and consistent commitment to
excellence every day as we complete the development of our novel
Bayesian model,” he said. “All of us on the team consider Mary a good
friend, especially her close co-worker Chao Ji,
with whom she runs marathon-style events in her spare time. Along with
the rest of our team, I look forward to keeping in touch with Mary and
following her career wherever it may lead.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Mary Jacketti and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Researchers who have spent a decade studying impacts from the Deepwater Horizon incident offered their personal perspectives as they reflected upon the oil spill’s 10th anniversary in an engaging series titled “Deepwater Diaries.”
Published by the research consortium studying Ecosystem Impacts of
Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf (ECOGIG), the diaries feature 10
scientists who candidly talked about what they were doing when the spill
happened, what they have learned since then, what they wish they had
known before the spill, how the Gulf of Mexico is doing now, and how the
Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) helped connect them to a
larger research community.
By Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact maggied@ngi.msstate.edu with questions or comments.
************
This research was made possible in part by grants from the Gulf of
Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) to The Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and
Gas Inputs to the Gulf consortia ECOGIG and ECOGIG-2.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Marine ecosystems provide many valuable resources for humans,
including seafood and petroleum. Conservation policies that protect
marine ecosystems, especially pollution and petroleum-related policies,
depend on accurate scientific data about the ways different marine
species experience pollution. Madison Schwaab
quantifies levels of toxic oil compounds in the bile and tissues
(liver, muscle, and gonad) of fifteen pelagic Gulf of Mexico fish
species to better understand how oil affects them compared to other
species.
Madison spent her childhood catching fish and blue crabs with her
father on Chesapeake Bay, where she witnessed firsthand how human
activities can negatively affect rivers, bays, and oceans. These
experiences piqued her curiosity about quantifying those impacts. As a
Temple University undergraduate student, she worked in Dr. Erik Cordes’
deep-sea ecology lab investigating how ocean acidification impacts
cold-water coral physiology. She also worked at the Smithsonian
Environmental Research Center studying the behavioral avoidance of
inland silversides in hypoxic and acidified environments. These research
experiences showed her how changing conditions can negatively affect
marine and estuarine animals.
Madison wanted to conduct anthropogenic-related research and started
researching graduate programs in Texas and Florida, where she knew there
was ongoing oil spill research. The oil spill research conducted in Dr. Steve Murawski’s
Population and Marine Ecosystem Dynamics Lab at the University of South
Florida intrigued her, and she reached out to him before applying for a
graduate research position there. He invited her to visit during a
recruitment weekend, and she immediately clicked with the lab and the
university. She joined the group as a master’s student conducting
GoMRI-funded research quantifying petrogenic and pyrogenic contaminant
concentrations in pelagic fish.
Her Work
Madison sampled fifteen pelagic tuna and billfish species collected
as by-catch during benthic research cruises (2011 – 2017) and main catch
during a pelagic cruise (2018). Because the collection includes
different time points and regions, she compared differences in
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) concentrations between these
pelagic species and across different regional, spatial, and temporal
scenarios. She also used data compiled by her fellow C-IMAGE researchers
to compare PAH concentrations in the pelagic species with species
living in other ocean habitats.
Madison analyzed fish bile using high-performance liquid
chromatography (HPLC) to semi-quantitatively measure PAH equivalent
concentrations (parent compounds plus metabolites) of naphthalene,
phenanthrene, and benzo[a]pyrene, which indicates short-term (hours to
days) PAH exposure. She also prepared liver, muscle, and gonad tissue
samples using the Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged, and Safe
(QuEChERS) extraction process and applies gas chromatography-tandem mass
spectrometry (GC-MS-MS) to assess concentrations of nineteen PAHs
(including 16 considered priority pollutants by the EPA) and their
alkylated homologues in fish tissue, which indicates long-term (months)
PAH exposure.
Only eight of the fifteen pelagic fish examined yielded enough usable
data to draw conclusions. Although Madison is still interpreting her
data, her early results suggest that there are higher PAH equivalent
concentrations in yellowfin tuna bile than the other seven fish species.
These levels were similar to concentrations observed in the benthic
golden tilefish, which are considered the highest known PAH equivalent concentrations in the Gulf of Mexico.
These preliminary findings represent one of the first indications that
pelagic fish species can be significantly affected by PAHs deposited
into the Gulf of Mexico.
“Finding similar PAH equivalent concentrations in yellowfin tuna and
the golden tilefish was unexpected, because the golden tilefish is a
burrowing fish and is strongly linked to sediments, where about 21% of Deepwater Horizon hydrocarbons
likely settled,” she explained. “Finding significant short-term PAH
concentrations in yellowfin tuna several years later suggests that they
are possibly being impacted by contamination sources other than Deepwater Horizon, such as the Mississippi River and the on-going natural oil seeps or small oil spills that frequently occur in the Gulf.”
Her Learning
Madison’s GoMRI work was her first experience conducting toxicology research. Her lab mates, especially Dr. Erin Pulster,
taught her a great deal about common toxicological methods and
operation of analytical instruments. While her lab work focused on the
finer details, she experienced the larger implications of her research
through field work. “Catching target pelagic species for our oil spill
research just meters away from oil rigs highlighted the connection
between my research and the bigger picture,” she said. Attending the
annual Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science conference helped
her learn from oil spill researchers in other fields and further connect
her own findings to the entire ecosystem. “Being part of GoMRI allowed
me to gain a holistic perspective on Deepwater Horizon’s short- and long-term impacts on Gulf ecosystems and surrounding communities.”
Madison has an increased appreciation for transferable scientific
skills, such as statistics and programming, and for opportunities that
improve scientific writing and communication. She hopes to find a career
where she can use her background and experiences to synthesize
scientific findings and inform practices and policies that protect
vulnerable ecosystems from pollution and oil contamination.
Praise for Madison
Dr. Murawski explained that Madison’s Deepwater Horizon
research has equipped her with broadened skills sets for investigating
key contemporary threats to marine ecosystems, especially related to
chemical pollution resulting from acute oil spills. “Her work on
pollution levels in large pelagic fishes of the Gulf has opened up new
venues of research and provided important new insights into how the Gulf
of Mexico functions,” he said. “She has a bright future in marine
science and policy, wherever her career takes her.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Madison Schwaab and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the C-IMAGE website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Alabama Center for Ecological Resilience (ACER) Consortium fact sheet series highlights the project’s research groups and their scientific focuses. These materials can be used as a classroom resource for science teachers on in the northern Gulf Coast research and for those with a general interest in oil spill research.
Introduction to ACER
A brief introduction to ACER and what they do. Click on the image or here to open the publication.
ACER’s Consumer Group
The Consumer research group focused on the top predators of the northern Gulf of Mexico ecosystem. Click on the image or here to open the publication.
ACER’s Wetland Group
The Wetland research group focused on the flora and fauna of coastal wetlands. Click on the image or here to open the publication.
ACER’s Oyster Group
The Oyster research group focused on the intertidal and subtidal oyster reefs along the northern Gulf Coast. Click on the image or here to open the publication.
ACER’s Nitrogen Cycling Group
The Nitrogen Cycling research group focused on the processes that convert nitrogen from one form to another in coastal habitats. Click on the image or here to open the publication.
ACER’s Microplankton Group
The Microplankton research group focused on how plankton, specifically plankton between 0.02 – 0.2 mm in size, are affected by oiling and the response to oiling (i.e. the use of dispersants). Click on the image or here to open the publication.
Oil that enters a marine environment can attach to particulate matter
suspended in the water and form oil particle aggregates, which then
sink to the seafloor. Some oil particle aggregates are created when
microbial excretions cause particulate matter and oil to cluster and
bind together, forming Marine Oil Snow or MOS. Others result when fine
sediment particles adhere to oil without microbial involvement, forming
oil sediment aggregates or OSAs. Following DeepwaterHorizon, there was a large Marine Oil Snow Sedimentation and Flocculent Accumulation (MOSSFA) event
that transported oil to the seafloor, impacting the benthic ecosystem.
If an oil spill were to occur in shallower shelf waters where more
sediment is suspended in the water column, OSAs would likely play an
important role in transporting oil to the seafloor.
Danielle Tarpley
is implementing and modifying code that calculates particle aggregation
for the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere-Wave and Sediment Transport (COAWST)
numerical model, helping improve predictions about vertical oil
transport via flocculated mud particles, or mud flocs. Simulations from
this model will help improve overall estimations of oil fate by
predicting the amount and location of sinking OSAs.
In her early high school years, Danielle whizzed through her math
classes. Hoping to advance her education, she enrolled at a math and
science school for her junior and senior years and took a marine biology
class that sparked her scientific curiosity. That experience motivated
her to enter the marine science undergraduate program at Coastal
Carolina University, which required students to study marine biology,
geology, chemistry, and physical oceanography and helped her discover an
affinity for the physical sciences. Later, she completed a master’s
degree there in coastal marine and wetland studies, which included
analyzing observational data using numerical model results.
When Danielle began her Ph.D. studies at the Virginia Institute of
Marine Science (VIMS), she started working with the COAWST model to
study the transport of mud flocs. There, she joined Dr. Courtney Harris’s
Sediment Transport Modeling lab, which became part of a GoMRI-funded
CSOMIO research team, developing a model framework describing oil
transport. The oil transport model will account for biological and
particulate interactions with hydrocarbons in the ocean. Danielle’s
CSOMIO research adapts the flocculation model to account for the
transport of settling oil within particle aggregates. “I find science
challenging, like a puzzle – if the pieces are put together properly,
then you can answer questions. It’s very satisfying when the pieces fall
into place, because my curiosity has an answer as well as more
questions,” said Danielle. “I like that there isn’t one set method to
reaching an answer, and I enjoy learning or discovering different
methods to produce results.”
Her Work
Danielle and her colleagues are generating computer code that for the
state-of-the-art COAWST numerical model originally developed by the US
Geological Survey. Because the COAWST model is a community resource,
hundreds of researchers use and contribute code to it, meaning that
researchers outside of Danielle’s working group will benefit from her
model developments. Her Ph.D. research began with developing code for
the flocculation model (FLOCMOD) that runs within COAWST’s Regional
Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) sediment transport model. The modified code
can now account for OSAs to help simulate the sedimentation of spilled
oil. “There’s only about a half-dozen people working with the
flocculation code in ROMS, and Danielle is one of them,” said Dr.
Harris. “She knows how to get in there and figure out what the code is
doing and make modifications as needed. Because she has the technical
background in FLOCMOD, she’s been a huge help in developing what we call
the Oil Particle Aggregate Model, or OPAMOD.”
Laboratory experiments conducted by fellow CSOMIO researchers at the
University of Delaware inform the OPAMOD code. The University of
Delaware team generates OSAs in jars and collects data about the
particles’ properties, composition, size, settling speed, and growth
rate. CSOMIO uses the OPAMOD within a comprehensive numerical model that
accounts for Gulf of Mexico currents, wave activity, Mississippi River
discharge, microbial oil consumption, and floc formation. The result of
the model simulation should be comparable to the oil budget estimated following Deepwater Horizon.
The FLOCMOD and OPAMOD code that Danielle tested and uses will help COAWST users reveal how much of the budgeted Deepwater Horizon
oil was transported to the seafloor rather than being consumed by
microbes, accumulated in surface slicks, or more-widely dispersed by
currents. She explained that the model needs to be tested in multiple
scenarios, including a Deepwater Horizon oil spill hindcast,
similar deep-water releases that favor transport onto adjacent shallow
shelves and coastal areas, oil spills directly on the shelf or in
hypoxic environments, and spills during cold winter conditions or large
river discharge and/or storm events. “I hope the work I’m doing will
provide confidence in the use of the FLOCMOD model and the expansion
that allows both mud and oil to stick together,” she said. “The main
goal is to model the amount and location of the oil and mud that falls
to the bottom from an oil spill.”
Her Learning
Working with CSOMIO, Danielle collaborated with scientists from other
institutions, including some whose work she had been following for
years. Danielle visited other labs and observed how they collected data,
gaining a better understanding about data comparison and factors that
can limit observational data’s usability, such as equipment capabilities
or sample source. Working with Dr. Harris helped Danielle become more
confident in her abilities as a scientist, and she recalled the moment
when she realized she was coming into her own as a researcher. “I
remember sitting in Dr. Harris’s office updating her on my progress,
when I realized that our conversation was more similar to a conversation
between colleagues than between teacher and student,” she said. “That
was definitely a turning point for me.”
Watching Dr. Harris teach, Danielle learned that regularly reviewing
and updating lecture material and giving feedback with empathy fostered a
better learning environment. She applied these skills when she mentored
a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) student in the computer
skills needed to analyze conductivity, temperature, and depth (CTD) and
acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) data from the Gulf of Mexico.
The data that the student collects will help build input files to
represent the Gulf of Mexico for the OPAMOD team. Danielle also worked
as an assistant high school earth science teacher and developed a
boardgame for the high school class using a water quality and
environmental science theme based on the Chesapeake Bay.
Danielle discovered that persistence pays off, especially when
preparing manuscripts. “I’ve learned that even though it may be
frustrating, it’s always important to double- and triple-check your work
with a critical eye,” she said. “Typos and minor formatting issues may
still happen, but the science will be strong.” She has enjoyed sharing
her research through local community outreach activities, such as the
VIMS Marine Science Day and at a “Scientist Walks into a Bar” event in
Williamsburg, Virginia.
She’s also learned the importance of participating in research early
in your college years through lab or field work, the REU program, or an
internship or fellowship. She found it helpful to ask graduate students
about their experiences and advice. “If you have the opportunity to
attend a conference as an undergraduate, do it. Move between schools,
because you’ll likely have a wider range of experiences, meet more
people, and build a wider network.”
Danielle accepted a tentative job offer with a government research
center that she anticipates will become an official offer once she
graduates.
Praise for Danielle
Dr. Harris explained that Danielle entered her lab with experience
limited to running numerical models and grew into a researcher who could
also modify the model code and track down tricky technical issues
within it. She praised Danielle’s tenacity and patience when tackling
difficult problems. “[When she ran into an obstacle], she just kept
trying different approaches until she finally got it to work,” she said.
“A lot of people would have given up, but she would try something, set
it aside for a few weeks, and then come back to it. Finally, after a
year, she hit on an approach that worked. That shows that she has what
it takes to do research, because we often do research because a problem
isn’t easy to solve.”
Dr. Harris also praised Danielle’s willingness to go above and
beyond, recalling an instance when Danielle conducted a two-week field
collection offshore of Myanmar for another project not related to her
research focus. “She has shown herself to be someone who, when asked to
do something, tries her best to fit it into her schedule,” said Dr.
Harris. “She took the two-week research cruise under very tough
conditions and did a great job taking sediments cores, ADCP data, and
CTD data. That work not only helped her gain field experience, but also
earned her co-authorship of an upcoming paper.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Danielle Tarpley and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the CSOMIO website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Coral reefs provide food, shelter, and habitat to thousands of
organisms living in the Gulf of Mexico. However, their vulnerability to
physical and toxicological damage increases corals’ risk during
environmental disturbances, particularly in shallow water where dangers
from coastline proximity include wastewater pollution, moving sediment,
salinity and nutrient changes, scavengers, and boating and fishing
activities.
Much research after Deepwater Horizon focused primarily on
community-level impacts to corals in areas affected by the oil spill. A
Florida-based science team is looking at individual effects at the coral
tissue level and is seeking to improve assessments with more-consistent
laboratory exposure methods, oil compounds used, and coral species
examined.
Dawn Bickham
is a master’s student with Nova Southeastern University’s Department of
Marine and Environmental Sciences, and she helps assess the health and
recovery of shallow-water corals exposed to oil- and oil plus dispersant
mixtures. Her findings will help fill knowledge gaps regarding
sublethal oil spill effects on coral systems and help responders
determine which aspects of the Gulf are most at-risk when an oil spill
occurs.
Dawn’s journey to biological research took a long and unexpected
road. After high school, she entered the United States Air Force as an
Operations Resource Manager and later completed an Information
Technology undergraduate degree at American InterContinental
University’s Florida campus. Shortly after, she began training
equestrian riders in Plantation, Florida, and shadowed equestrian
industry leaders to acquire nutrition and sports medicine skills to help
her clients. She also started diving and snorkeling and joked that if
she wasn’t on a horse, she was in the water.
Snorkeling sparked Dawn’s curiosity about coral biology, so she
searched for local coral research opportunities and volunteered in Dr. Abigail Renegar’s
scleractinian coral biology lab at Nova Southeastern University. She
spent more than a decade volunteering in the lab and occasionally
attended scientific conferences with Dr. Renegar, which further fueled
her captivation with coral research. When a lab position became
available, Dawn applied to the university’s biological sciences master’s
program and joined Dr. Renegar’s GoMRI-funded coral research team. “My
interactions with the oil spill community sparked my interest in oil-
and dispersant-related research and cultivated a drive to educate the
community about spilled oil’s impacts on our marine resources,” said
Dawn. “When the opportunity to work with corals in the scope of oil
spill response arose, I was excited to pursue it.”
Her Work
Dawn’s current research began with a previous collaboration between
the Renegar lab and government and response community research partners
to develop a standardized toxicity testing protocol for adult
scleractinian corals (hard corals) that considers how different coral
species respond to individual oil compounds. During that effort, the
team successfully developed and applied the protocol to one species of
shallow-water coral and demonstrated the lethal and sublethal impacts of
a single hydrocarbon. The Renegar team is building upon that work by
including more coral species and predicting the toxicity of other
individual hydrocarbons using the critical body burdens (CBB) – the
exposure levels that corals can experience before toxicity occurs, which
can cause long-term negative health effects. Their results will help
determine thresholds of acceptable/unacceptable impact on corals, help
predict impact severity, and inform oil spill responders about the
potential impacts of oil and various response methods on corals.
Dawn and her colleagues exposed five ecologically relevant coral species (Acropora cervicornis, Solenastrea bournoni, Stephanocoenia intersepta, Siderastrea siderea, and Porites astreoides)
to different hydrocarbon concentrations commonly found in Gulf of
Mexico crude oil (toluene, 1-methylnaphthalene, and phenanthrene) for 48
hours using a passive dosing method. They collected growth rate and
Pulse-Amplitude-Modulation (PAM) data, which measures the corals’
photosynthetic health (how well it absorbs or reflects light), conducted
transcriptomic analyses on the coral’s RNA, and determined CBB using
visual assessments of coral condition. These metrics will help determine
the concentrations at which each hydrocarbon begins negatively
affecting the coral. The team also conducted exposures using increasing
concentrations of crude oil to validate findings from the
single-hydrocarbon experiment and conducted oil plus dispersant
exposures to learn more about effects from dispersant use near coral
reefs.
After each exposure treatment, Dawn wounded the corals with a dremel
to simulate damage that might occur during response operations (from
booms or other mitigation equipment) and took photos at different time
points (at time of wound, 1 week after, 1 month after, and 3 months
after). She is analyzing approximately 800 photos to determine if there
is a correlation between oil concentration and the corals’ ability to
repair wounds. Dawn’s team plans to generate a detailed understanding of
oil toxicity for each coral species by combining the wound repair data,
the PAM data, results from the coral’s RNA transcriptomic analysis, and
CBB data from visual coral condition assessments. “All of our metrics
are put together to address the big picture of coral health, and the
outcome we’re starting to see is that corals may be much more resilient
than we expected,” said Dawn.
The team will integrate their results into existing and emerging oil
toxicity and 3D oil plume models that will visualize and predict how oil
affects corals and inform decisions related to the impact severity of
response treatments. “As long as we are using and processing oil, it’s
not if we have another oil spill disaster, it’s when,”
she said. “When we do our experiments, we want to give responders and
industry the best information possible before a spill happens.”
Dawn expressed an interest in exploring the coral’s genetic data to
observe if exposure triggered the upregulation or downregulation of any
genes that might affect the coral’s ability to recover. She speculates
that if the exposure triggered an upregulation of genes that help
protect the coral, such as mucus production, there may not be enough
energy left for the coral to repair itself when wounded. She hopes that
future experiments explore this possibility.
Her Learning
The project’s ambitious experiment schedule required much planning
and teamwork, which helped Dawn learn how to function as part of a
larger research group. She learned skills in experimental design,
workload sharing, and laboratory organization and was able to apply her
computer science background to manage the project’s large quantities of
data. She found that a big challenge of laboratory research is repeating
certain tasks over and over, but she emphasized that it is important to
conduct detailed analyses that validate one’s findings. “Completing
specific tasks multiple times can cause some people to become complacent
in those details,” she said. “We ensured that we maintained the same
quality of work through the entire process.”
Dawn is thankful that the GoMRI program helped her expand her
horizons and learn new skills. She learned the importance of having an
advisor who is understanding, eager to teach, and encourages the use of
existing knowledge to gain new knowledge. “I’m coming into this project
as a second career and, since I don’t come from a biology background,
I’m doing a lot of catch up,” she said. “Working with team members and
collaborating with industry people and researchers from other projects
has been amazing. I’ve found it a very reassuring place to be.”
Dawn hopes to find a position in industry where she can continue
working in toxicology and investigate the sublethal effects of
environmental disturbances on marine organisms.
Praise for Dawn
Dr. Renegar reflected on Dawn’s unique background as an Air Force
veteran and computer scientist. She explained that Dawn’s experiences
have granted her a level of maturity that allows her to mentor her
fellow graduate students. Since joining the lab, Dawn has become an
integral part of the lab culture and Dr. Renegar praised her eagerness
to learn new skills and apply her previous knowledge to coral biology
research. “Dawn has learned a great deal since joining the lab,” she
said. “I have been very pleased with her progress as a scientist!”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Dawn Bickham and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The microbial community living in fish’s gastrointestinal tracts,
also called the gut microbiome, are vital to their developing immune
systems and can influence behaviors such as foraging. Studies conducted
following Deepwater Horizon observed that crude oil exposure
can shift the gut microbiome’s community structure to favor microbes
that can degrade toxic oil chemicals. Determining if oil exposure
triggers similar responses in other Gulf of Mexico fish species and if
their foraging behaviors change is important to understanding their risk
to oil exposure.
Maggie Wigren
is investigating how toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in
weathered oil affect the gut microbiomes and foraging behavior of
sheepshead minnows, a small fish that lives in the estuarine
environments surrounding the Gulf of Mexico. The presence of
oil-degrading microbes in the minnows’ guts could serve as bioindicators
of polluted areas and potentially decrease the bioaccumulated oil load
in fish.
As a child, Maggie was fascinated by fish and marine environments and
spent most of her childhood swimming, fishing, and wading through
streams. She developed a passion for understanding and protecting
natural ecosystems that inspired her to pursue an ecology and
environmental science undergraduate degree at Purdue University. There,
she became interested in disease ecology and ecotoxicology in aquatic
habitats and accepted a graduate student position in Dr. Marisol Sepulveda’s ecotoxicology lab conducting GoMRI-funded research that investigates how different fish species respond to oil exposure.
“When I heard about the devastation that the Deepwater Horizon
oil spill caused, I felt helpless,” said Maggie. “I’ve always been
passionate about preserving and protecting natural areas, so when I
found an opportunity to do research that could help inform oil spill
response efforts, I was eager to start. I hope that the more we know
about the broad, negative impacts of oil spills, the more our society
can work towards more environmentally friendly policies and cleaner
forms of energy.”
Her Work
Maggie conducted experiments to observe how oil affects microbial
communities in the minnows’ guts and examine minnow foraging behaviors
before and after oiling. She used a high-speed blender to thoroughly mix
1 gram of weathered Deepwater Horizon oil in 1 liter of
artificial seawater, creating a high-energy water-accommodated fraction
or HEWAF (a homogenous oil-water solution). She exposed 5 fish to a 5%
concentration of the HEWAF solution for 7 days, changing the water daily
to maintain the oil dose and repeated this process three times.
For the microbiome experiments, Maggie dissected and extracted DNA
from the fish’s gastrointestinal tracts after the 7-day exposure. DNA
analysis from 16S rRNA and shotgun metagenomic sequencing will tell her
which bacteria are present and their functions. The data analysis is
still ongoing, but early results show trends that suggest oil exposure
alters the gut microbiome composition in sheepshead minnows and
increases the abundance of oil-degrading bacteria.
For the foraging experiments, Maggie observed the number of prey
items fish captured at the beginning and end of the 7-day exposure. She
released 10 zooplankton (Daphnia magna) into the oil treatment
and control tanks and mounted a GoPro action camera to record how many
zooplankton the fish consumed within 3 minutes. Surprisingly,
oil-exposed fish exhibited higher prey capture rates than control fish,
the opposite of her initial hypothesis. She theorizes that the
oil-exposed fish may be attempting to acquire more nutrients while in a
stressed state and hopes that future studies will investigate this
possibility further.
Maggie hopes that her research will help demonstrate the broad
effects of oil exposure on non-game and sporting fish. “Although most
people don’t think about minnows, they are an important foraging fish
for other larger, more economically important fish species,” she said.
“By observing oil’s effect on the minnows’ microbiome, we can create a
broader toxicological profile for oil contamination in fish, which could
help identify bacteria that are potential bioindicators of pollution.”
Her Learning
Maggie entered Dr. Sepulveda’s lab without any toxicology or
microbial ecology experience and was initially overwhelmed with figuring
out how to conduct microbiome research and dealing with equipment
issues. Despite these obstacles, she found support in her peers,
advisor, and advisory committee, finding that talking out her struggles
cleared her mind, led her to solutions, and improved her communication
and collaboration skills. “The whole process of designing, executing,
and analyzing my own experiment has helped me grow significantly as a
scientist and become more independent,” she said.
Maggie recalls that she felt intimidated the first time she attended a
large scientific conference but learned from fellow attendees that
everyone experiences imposter syndrome at some point in their career.
“It was very eye-opening and refreshing to listen and talk to fellow
scientists in the field,” she said. “I came back revitalized and ready
to tackle the rest of my project with new ideas about how to analyze my
results.” She is grateful that she can contribute meaningful research
towards oil spill science and ecosystem preservation as a member of the
GoMRI science community.
Maggie plans to move to Vancouver, British Columbia, after graduating
and pursue a career in environmental consulting, marine conservation
research, or outreach that fosters scientific literacy and environmental
stewardship. She feels that it is important to learn from those in
fields that interest you. “Take advantage of any and all resources that
come your way and expand your network of fellow scientists,” she said.
“Don’t be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone, and don’t
hesitate to ask for help when you need it. There is no shame in reaching
out for support among your peers and advisors.”
Praise for Maggie
Maggie’s research is the first microbiome study conducted in Dr.
Sepulveda’s lab, who explained that Maggie was instrumental in designing
the experiment and developing and implementing the study’s different
protocols, including the protocols for 16S rRNA sequencing and
metagenomics. “I have watched Maggie grow as a scientist over the past
2+ years,” she said. “I think her work is unique and will advance our
field. She has a bright future ahead of her!”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Maggie Wigren and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Texas Gulf Coast is experiencing a rapid increase in oil refining
and transport activities, which also increases the risk of
spill-related impacts to its coastal bays and estuarine ecosystems.
Marine researchers from several institutions converged on the Texas
coast in June 2019 and conducted an intensive two-week biological
survey, or BioBlitz, to establish a first-of-its-kind DNA census of the
area’s marine organisms. This extensive library of unique DNA barcodes
will help scientists efficiently assess changes in marine biodiversity
in Texas coastal bay and estuarine systems affected by an oil spill or
other environmental disturbances.
Nearly one-third of the United States’ oil refining capacity is
situated along the Texas Gulf Coast. The Port of Corpus Christi exported
a record 1.59 million barrels of crude oil per day in December 2019,
which represents nearly half of all United States oil exports. Several
new pipelines are under construction that will direct crude oil from
West and Central Texas to a proposed site in northeast Corpus Christi
Bay. Permits are under review that will deepen the Port of Corpus
Christi’s ship channel to accommodate large oil tankers capable of
carrying two million barrels of crude oil.
Using quantitative and qualitative sampling methods, the team
collected 1,500 specimens from mud flats, seagrass beds, hypersaline
lagoons, saltmarshes, oyster reefs, and mangroves at 68 sampling
locations. They identified 396 unique taxa, including 318 invertebrates
and 78 fishes, then photographed and sampled them for DNA analysis and
prepared them for museum archives. Approximately twelve years of
existing water quality, net ecosystem metabolism, nutrient, plankton,
fish, invertebrate, and vegetation data provides an environmental
context for the BioBlitz collections.
“All living things shed cells into the water that contain their DNA.
With this data, a few small water samples will enable scientists to see
how and why animal species change following extreme environmental events
like oil spills or hurricanes,” said DROPPS Director Ed Buskey.
“The environmental DNA inventory will be a treasure trove for
scientists to quickly and efficiently measure who and what is living in
Texas bays and estuaries. It’s a powerful tool to assess impact on
marine biodiversity if a spill were to occur.”
By Nilde Maggie Dannreuther and Stephanie Ellis. Contact maggied@ngi.msstate.edu
for questions or comments. Special thanks to Ed Buskey, Tracy
Weatherall, and Sally Palmer with the University of Texas Marine Science
Institute who provided material for this story.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
A journey reveals that her voice matters. A trip changes his work
motivation. The theme of disaster response frames both of these touching
and inspiring science stories. Members of the Gulf of Mexico Research
Initiative community, Samantha (Mandy) Joye and Simeon Pesch, joined
scientists Jessica Moreman, Laura Guertin, and Paula Buchanan and shared
their personal experiences at the 2019 American Geophysical Union’s
(AGU) Fall Meeting Story Collider event.
The packed room of 75 attendees thoroughly enjoyed the event and now you can, too! Listen to their stories though these recordings provided by the Story Collider.
TheGulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The ocean’s deep-pelagic ecosystem is the largest and least
understood habitat on Earth. In the Gulf of Mexico, it was the largest
ecosystem affected by the Deepwater Horizon incident. Because
there was very limited pre-spill data about deep-pelagic organisms’
biodiversity, abundance, and distribution, it is difficult to determine
how oiling may have affected different deep-sea species.
Information about the longevity and age at reproduction of key Gulf
of Mexico deep-sea fauna, such as lanternfish or fangtooths, is crucial
to determine their vulnerability and resilience to disturbances such as
oil spills. However, the depths at which these organisms live and the
challenges involved with raising them in captivity or tagging them in
the wild make collecting this data difficult.
Natalie Slayden uses ear stones, called otoliths, collected from fish living in Deepwater Horizon-affected
waters to study the age and growth of nine Gulf of Mexico deep-sea fish
species. Her research can be used to estimate the lifespan and age at
which these deep-sea fishes reproduce to determine how quickly a
potentially compromised assemblage might be replaced following an
environmental disturbance.
Natalie developed an appreciation for marine environments at an early
age. Growing up near the Appomattox River in Virginia, she spent her
childhood swimming and using kite string and doughballs to fish for
catfish on her grandparents’ houseboat. Her family often traveled to
North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where they spent their days searching for
fish, blue crabs, and hermit crabs in tide pools formed during high
tides. These formative experiences inspired Natalie to pursue a biology
undergraduate degree with a marine biology concentration at Old Dominion
University. During that time, she participated in several research
projects, including a Belize study abroad program researching coral reef
ecology, a Cayman Islands internship researching lionfish diets, and a
project with Dr. Mark Butler’s marine ecology lab investigating how
climate change could affect the transmission of the Caribbean spiny
lobster disease, PaV1 (Panulirus argus Virus 1).
When Natalie began her marine biology master’s studies at Nova
Southeastern University, she volunteered in various labs searching for
projects that included meaningful research. One of her volunteer
experiences was with Dr. Tracey Sutton’s
Oceanic Ecology Lab, and the numerous deep-sea questions and research
focuses intrigued her. She joined his lab as a graduate student working
on his GoMRI project investigating deep-sea fish’s resiliency to
disturbances such as oil spills. “Deep-sea research appealed to me
because of how rewarding it can be,” said Natalie. “While I’m currently
studying the age and growth of Gulf of Mexico deep-sea fishes, there
will always be an avenue for research [related to the deep sea].”
Her Work
Otoliths, located in the fish’s cranium, assist with hearing and
balance and provide a natural, chemical tracer representing an
organism’s lifetime record of environmental exposures. Because the
otoliths Natalie works with are as small as a grain of sand, she removes
them using fine tools and photographs and measures them using a
microscope-mounted camera. She then grinds and polishes the otoliths to
reveal rings that can help her determine the fish’s age, similar to tree
rings. She estimates each specimen’s age as a range based on the unit
(days, years, etc.) that the rings likely represent for each species.
“The otolith rings can mean different things for each fish and could be
counted as days, years, or even represent feeding events or different
life stages,” explained Natalie. “So far, it seems that the rings in
most of the species I am studying may represent different life events
and feeding.”
When interpreting a fish’s age using life events, Natalie measures
the fish’s length and compares it to the length at which larval fish
swim to depth. Then, she looks for evidence that indicates this event in
the otoliths (typically seen as a change in the rings’ darkness or
width). She also looks for evidence of life events such as undergoing a
transformation or, if a fish is a hermaphrodite, a change in sex. When
interpreting the otoliths for feeding events, dark rings can represent
starvation while lighter rings indicate a food event or digestion.
However, interpreting a fish’s age based on feeding varies between
species. For example, lanternfish migrate to the surface each night to
feed and acquire daily rings that represent both one day and a meal.
Fishes that feed less frequently are more complicated to age, and
Natalie depends on existing data about their feeding habits to estimate
age.
The data that Natalie has collected on fish age can help estimate the
average lifespans of different deep-sea species, which helps her
interpret their resilience to disturbances. Species who more quickly
repopulate due to their short life spans may also more quickly rebound
from environmental disturbances like oil exposure. The data on fish age
and lifespan from Natalie’s research will become input parameters for
models that estimate how long their recovery from disturbances may take.
“In an environment disturbed by an oil spill, fish populations with
individuals that have a shorter lifespan would likely recover the
fastest,” said Natalie. “If we know how old these oil-exposed fish are
using the data recorded in their otoliths, it can help us understand how
long the oil may have effects on populations.”
Her Learning
Natalie named DEEPEND’s DP06 research cruise in 2018 as her most
rewarding experience participating in GoMRI research and recalled her
excitement at seeing deep-sea organisms first-hand as they came out of
trawling nets. She felt fortunate to work alongside scientists from
diverse fields and learn new skills from other researchers, especially a
team that often discovers new organisms.
“The researchers were nice, welcoming, and fun to be around, and the
crew was just as excited about our research as we were,” she said. “The
cruise taught me the importance of comradery and simply being good to
one another.”
Natalie presented her research at the 2019 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
and Ecosystem Science conference and plans to present an updated talk at
this year’s event. “I am incredibly thankful to be a member of the
GoMRI science community,” she said. “It is an honor to be able to work
alongside and learn from scientists who are at the top of their fields.”
Natalie is confident that the skills she learned working in Dr.
Sutton’s lab will help her transition to the workforce. She also
believes that gaining diverse skills and having a multidisciplinary
background will expand her future options and plans to take additional
course work in cyber security and computer programming after graduating.
“It’s ok to be unsure of what exactly you want to do and to change the
subject matter of your work,” she said. “I went from studying Caribbean
Spiny lobsters to studying deep-sea fishes living a mile below the
surface. There is no limit!”
Praise for Natalie
Dr. Sutton explained that Natalie represents everything that his lab
and the GoMRI program promotes, especially scholarship, leadership, and
character. He described her as being scientifically fearless, attacking
the research with gusto. “She learned the intricacies of ageing fishes,
then applied them to a group of fishes who are not only quite
technically difficult (having small, aberrant otoliths) but also quite
difficult to interpret, as they live below the daily signals of
sunlight,” he said.
Dr. Sutton also praised Natalie’s leadership skills when she leads
the lab’s daily operations and, by extension, the efforts of numerous
DEEPEND research projects. He explained that she handles all things with
grace and generosity and takes requests with a smile. “The word with
Natalie is trust – when she handles a task, you know it will be done
well and on time,” said Dr. Sutton. “She speaks softly and slowly but
thinks quickly, creating a joyful, positive vibe in the lab for which I
am extremely grateful.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Natalie Slayden and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the DEEPEND website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
These small, educational brochures each highlight ten practical lifestyle practices that individuals can adopt to take better care of the world’s ocean. They can act as hand-outs for people visiting a table, educational booth, or public event.
These files can be printed on card stock, cut, and folded into wallet-sized cards:
These learning activities introduce students to different deep-sea organisms living in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Build a Deep-Sea Coral activity utilizes an easy craft project to get students thinking about the architecture of deep-sea corals (which is different from shallow-water corals) and the animals that live on or near the coral. Students can also discuss how corals that live without sunlight obtain their nutrition.
The Build a Deep Sea Tube Wormactivity uses a simple craft to teach students about tube worm anatomy and its unique way that tube worms obtain energy from the deep sea.
This three-part video series features the new and innovative satellite tagging research that scientists are conducting on captive mahi-mahi to research how the larger pop-up satellite archival tags (PSATs) affect mahi-mahi swim performance and behavior. Wildlife Computers, who developed the PSAT tags, designed a scaled-down, non-data collecting “mini” tag specifically for the Relationships of Effects of Cardiac Outcomes in fish for Validation of Ecological Risk (RECOVER) consortium’s research.
This experiment and the data produced is beneficial for interpreting data collected during the MAHI cruise, a 17-day Gulf of Mexico research cruise in June 2019. During the cruise, 50 wild-caught mahi-mahi were tagged with PSAT and exposed to control (seawater) and experimental (oil-exposed seawater) recovery tanks before being released back into the Gulf of Mexico.
This series is comprised of three short parts:
Part One: Mini Mahi Tags introduces master’s student C.J. McGuigan, whose hatchery research assesses the behavioral changes and metabolism of captive mahi carrying the satellite tags.
Part Two: Tunnels and Tags highlights how RECOVER uses the mini PSAT to asses the metabolic cost of carrying a PSAT tag through swim chamber respirometry.
Part Three: Behavior and Tags highlights the behavioral impacts of satellite tags on captive mahi-mahi through video analysis captured using a GoPro camera affixed to the top of a large research tank.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team released a publication that discusses various ways that oil exposure can impact mangroves, which have partially submerged root systems that make them especially sensitive to contaminants. Mangroves are widely distributed along Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea coastlines, and they provide important ecosystem services such as protecting shorelines, improving water quality, and providing shelter to fish and shellfish.
Read Impacts of Oil on Mangroves
to learn about four types of impacts that mangroves may experience
depending on how oil accumulates along shorelines. Also included are
ways to protect mangroves, what history tells us about mangrove
recovery, and issues related to restoration of damaged mangroves.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team synthesizes
peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general audiences,
particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast. Sea Grant
offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently-held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, resource managers
recognized the need for species-specific fish risk assessments to help
identify which organisms and habitats would be most affected. However,
because many marine species lack toxicological data needed for such
assessments, researchers suggested an alternate way to help prioritize
species with potentially higher sensitivity or risk to petrochemicals
(chemicals in petroleum): a vulnerability index that ranks each species’
relative sensitivity or resilience using species-specific life history
traits in combination with the likelihood of petrochemical exposure and
any known toxicological responses.
Megan Woodyard
is helping develop this petrochemical vulnerability index for more than
2,000 Gulf of Mexico marine species to support improved decision-making
for marine resource management, mitigation, restoration, and recovery
in United States, Mexican, and Cuban waters.
Megan completed three undergraduate degrees (statistics, English, and
history) at Arizona State University (ASU) as an honors college
student, participating in faculty projects and completing a thesis on a
statistical technique called random forest that classifies data using
decision trees. Megan’s undergraduate mentor, Dr. Jennifer Broatch, suggested that Dr. Beth Polidoro’s research classifying species’ trait data for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species
would align well with Megan’s thesis focus. After Megan successfully
designed a random forest code to identify key traits associated with
species’ Red List status, Dr. Polidoro offered her a graduate position
on her GoMRI research team, which is developing a petrochemical
vulnerability index for Gulf of Mexico marine species. Megan is
co-advised by Dr. Polidoro and Dr. Steven Saul, who leads the statistical analysis aspects of their research.
Her Work
Megan’s team developed a theoretical framework for the overall
vulnerability index that will estimate each marine species’
vulnerability to petroleum chemicals based on their likelihood of
exposure, relative sensitivity, and population resilience. Before the
index can be applied, the team must compile the relevant data for over
2,000 marine species into a dataset that the index can use. Megan
gathered available life history and other data for 1,600 Gulf of Mexico
fish species from the IUCN’s Species Information Service, FishBase,
academic literature, and other databases. She formatted the data and
coded it for different key phrases and consistency across the dataset.
“When you pull data from multiple sources, it can be phrased in all
sorts of ways,” she explained. “Using the category of ‘diet’ as an
example, these programs can search for key phrases about feeding
preferences like ‘invertebrates’ or ‘fish’ and flag the species for that
diet. This way, I can easily analyze and rank species efficiently and
consistently from massive chunks of text.”
Megan is writing rules for the framework index to rank vulnerability
based on the compiled data. To do this, the framework will need to
classify available data using a numerical, weighted hierarchy that is
summed to assign a vulnerability number for each species. Then, Megan
can use the framework ranking methodology and results to develop
predictions of how petrochemical exposure may impact marine species
differently. She will also use the index to identify major knowledge
gaps in species’ life history and other data.
Megan’s work, and her colleagues’ work on the more than 400 non-fish
species datasets, will provide comprehensive petrochemical vulnerability
rankings for over 2,000 Gulf of Mexico species as well as data on each
species’ extinction risk and updated spatial distributions. “It’s
critical that we develop methodologies to predict how petrochemical
exposure will affect Earth’s species,” said Megan. “I hope to create a
comprehensive petrochemical vulnerability index of fish species that can
help us better understand oil spill impacts and more accurately target
areas of concern during future disasters.”
Her Learning
Megan is thankful for the opportunities through GoMRI to work
alongside scientists who inspire her, “Through GoMRI, I feel that I’m
contributing to something important rather than simply conducting
research for the sake of conducting research.” While attending a Red
List workshop in Mexico, she watched as Dr. Polidoro and Ph.D. student Kyle Strongin
competed to see who could name the most fish species in a tank without
using the posted information placards. “A lot of fish species look very
similar, but they could even nail the scientific names,” said Megan. “In
that moment, I realized that my GoMRI and IUCN research had helped me
become a part of this amazing group of scientists with incredible levels
of focus, drive, and knowledge. I’m still learning, and I have never
felt judged negatively for that. I can ask for help or advice from any
member of the community, and they will take time out of their
unbelievably busy schedules without complaint or expecting anything in
return, just for the sake of science.”
Megan explained that, while the sciences can be intimidating, she has
found that even experienced scientists struggle with and adjust their
methods to overcome failures. “It may feel like there is an expectation
that you will determine one single, exact answer to a question, but I’ve
found that we often have to make situational judgement calls, since we
are still trying to make our way toward those answers. There are so many
ways to approach problems,” she said. Megan is applying to Ph.D.
programs at ASU’s School of Sustainability, the first comprehensive
degree-granting program in the United States that focuses on solutions
to environmental, economic, and social challenges.
Praise for Megan
Dr. Polidoro praised Megan’s progress synthesizing and coding an
enormous amount of data for over 1,600 fish species to complete their
vulnerability rankings. She joked that she and Megan often briefly
derail their research discussions to bond over their pet snakes,
exchanging stories about their ball pythons, Peanut Butter and Steve,
before jumping back into the science.
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Megan Woodyard and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team released a publication on technologies that complement traditional ship, satellite, and mooring-based tools that researchers use to study oil spills, including Deepwater Horizon. These complimentary technologies include Unmanned Surface and Aerial Vehicles (USVs and UAVs), Saildrones, aerial drones, drifters, blimps, balloons, and advanced remote sensing technology.
Read In the air and on the water: Technology used to investigate oil spills
to learn about the capabilities of these technologies and how
researchers have used them. Included are factors that scientists
consider when determining which unmanned vehicle is the best fit for
their research.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team synthesizes
peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general audiences,
particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast. Sea Grant
offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently-held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Because oil and water don’t mix easily, oil droplets in the ocean
environment tend to aggregate into larger masses, which hinders
microbial degradation. Chemical dispersants used for oil spill response
contain water-soluble and oil-soluble components that adhere to oil
droplets and increase the oil and water’s compatibility, allowing oil to
disperse more easily into the water column and enhancing microbial
consumption. However, because chemical dispersants require constant
energy input from waves, wind, and currents to keep the oil dispersed,
they typically only slow oil’s coalescence rather than prevent it.
Chris Keller
is developing a dispersant system that combines silica nanoparticles
and polymer surfactants and doesn’t require energy input to generate
stable oil emulsions. His goal is to identify which combination of these
compounds will maximize oil entrapment and dispersion while minimizing
harm to marine life.
Chris’s interest in science began with his Mandeville, Louisiana,
high school chemistry teacher, whose passion for science and its ability
to change the world inspired him. He discovered a knack for scientific
research while performing basic lab experiments, often modifying the
experimental conditions for efficiency. His interest in chemistry
eventually evolved into a passion for polymer science.
As an undergraduate polymer science student at the University of
Southern Mississippi, Chris investigated the drug delivery applications
of different biopolymers in Dr. Daniel Savin’s
polymer science lab. He recalls assisting Kyle Bentz, who was then a
graduate student in the lab, with his GoMRI-funded research on nanoparticle-based oil dispersants.
The research held great significance to Chris, who is from the
Louisiana coast, where oil spills and chemical dispersants can affect
the local ecosystem and marine life for years. “When I was accepted to
Tulane University as a Ph.D. student, little did I know that I would be
continuing that same GoMRI research under the direction of Dr. Scott Grayson,”
said Chris. “By researching alternative methods to cleanup oil spills, I
feel that I am contributing to measures that can help lessen their
impacts and ensure that an oil spill isn’t a defining event for a
region’s ecosystem.”
His Work
Chris is continuing the research of Dr. Kyle Bentz and Dr. Muhammad Ejaz
investigating polymer-modified silica-based nanoparticles as a new
system of oil dispersants. Chris’s team hypothesizes that once the
nanoparticle system entraps the oil, the oil’s density will change so
that it floats to the ocean surface for collection via skimming. This
process could be repeated as many times as necessary to help spill
response efforts. Chris is designing the nanoparticle system and
observing the nanoparticles’ reactions with unimolecular micelles
(single-molecule surfactant polymers that don’t require energy input to
generate stable oil emulsions).
The nanoparticle system is made up of a silica-based core with a
copolymer chain attached to it that contains both hydrophobic
(oil-soluble) and hydrophilic (water-soluble) polymer molecules. The
hydrophobic polymer drives the entrapment of oil while the hydrophilic
polymer helps disperse the oil into the water column. Chris has found
that there is a delicate balance between the ratio of these two polymers
that dictates if the system will exhibit the right properties for
real-world application. For example, too many hydrophobic molecules
could trap oil too quickly, changing the oil’s density so that it rises
to the surface earlier than desired, but too many hydrophilic molecules
could slow the rate of oil entrapment and reduce the amount of oil that
disperses. Too many polymer molecules overall could create particles
that are too large to effectively disperse the oil and may affect marine
organisms.
So far, Chris has observed preliminary evidence of oil entrapment and
established the minimum number of hydrophilic molecules required to
disperse the oil particles in water (up to tens of milligrams per
milliliter of water). He is currently adjusting the ratio of hydrophobic
and hydrophilic molecules to identify combinations that will return the
same or better results. To do this, he tests various
nanoparticle-micelle mixtures under an inert (not chemically active)
nitrogen atmosphere and observes their reactions over time. He examines
if simple shaking will disperse the modified particles in water and, if
so, records what concentrations are needed to prevent the particles
falling to the bottom of the test vial. Each reaction’s success is
determined by the amount of polymer that effectively attaches to the
nanoparticle surface. He uses a centrifuge to isolate the nanoparticle
system and collect the free polymers that did not attach during the
reaction. Analyzing the unattached polymers can provide a rough
approximation of the size of the polymers that attached to the
nanoparticle surface.
Chris sends batches of different polymer-modified nanoparticles to
collaborating labs to be analyzed for toxicity and effectiveness in
entrapping oil. He constantly adjusts his experimental set up based on
his colleagues’ findings on the different formulations. “At the end of
the day, it’s about a real-world application. Their results help me
adjust the polymer makeup to find a system that will meet our goal: the
most oil entrapment with the least environmental impact,” explained
Chris. “Furthermore, Dr. Savin’s lab at the University of Florida is
developing a different polymer-modified nanoparticle system to test
against mine to see which one yields better results.”
Once the new dispersant system’s design is complete, Chris will
fine-tune the system so that industry can scale it up for real-world
application. While the system is being developed with oil spill
mitigation in mind, there are other potential uses of the team’s
nanoparticle dispersant system. “Future applications other than
dispersants are going to largely depend on how ‘biofriendly’ we can make
these,” explained Chris. “For example, an undergraduate student working
on his senior thesis under my guidance is examining the use of
sugar-based nanoparticles. If we can utilize a different core such as
sugar instead of silica, I think we could potentially see some use as
drug carriers or filtration devices later down the line.”
His Learning
Dr. Grayson taught Chris to take his research one goal at a time and
emphasized collaboration’s important role in achieving those goals.
Being a part of the GoMRI community keeps Chris mindful of the broader
implications of his research. For example, Chris’s close focus on his
laboratory research sometimes caused him to forget that, while his
research has applications for oil spill response, research contributing
to other applications is just as important. “When I go to the Gulf of
Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science conference, I get to see the
other researchers’ perspectives first-hand and consider things that I
wouldn’t have thought about on my own,” he said. “It makes me a more
well-rounded researcher.”
As Chris nears graduation, he prepares his research for the next
cohort of graduate students to continue. “Science is a marathon, not a
sprint, and is met with a lot of ‘brick walls’ and frustration,” said
Chris. “Having patience, taking a step back, and looking at it from
different perspectives [makes it possible to] change the world one small
victory at a time. The experiments won’t always work, but that’s the
point of research.”
Praise for Chris
Dr. Grayson praised how Chris tested the team’s theory that silica
nanoparticles modified with surfactant polymers could successfully
stabilize oil mixtures in water. He explained that Chris’s experiments
built upon previous research to include more oil dispersion processes
and remove high temperatures associated with synthesizing the polymers
and nanoparticles. “Chris has done a great job working on this theory,”
said Dr. Grayson. “It appears in these last few months that he will
finally achieve everything that we had hoped for: an environmentally
friendly, non-toxic oil dispersant.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Chris Keller and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
When a marine oil spill occurs, it is vital to quickly determine
where and when to dispatch response operations. Visualization and remote
sensing techniques help locate oil on surface waters but have
limitations in locating subsurface oil, such as oil that lingers in the
water column or settles to the bottom. During Deepwater Horizon,
researchers developed for the NOAA Response and Restoration’s Emergency
Response Division an open-source predictive model that infers where
submerged oil is and predicts where it will go using near real-time
field sampling data. This model, called the inferential Subsurface Oil
Simulator (SOSim) model, could assess sunken oil on relatively flat bay
bottoms and continental shelves but only for a single complete discharge
of oil.
Chao Ji
is helping to develop a next-generation SOSim model that integrates
reconnaissance, flow field, and bathymetric data to address a continuous
spill situation and various seafloor topography. “The model’s output is
a 3D map showing the probability of finding submerged oil in different
locations,” she explained. “The updated SOSim model can provide a
sampling plan that tells emergency responders where they can get a
submerged oil sample in the event of a future spill.”
Growing up, Chao found great joy in discovering answers to her
questions about the world, which sparked her initial interest in
science. The pollution of a clean river in her hometown motivated her to
conduct research that could help make the world greener. One of Chao’s
first efforts toward this goal was designing a zero-energy-consuming
toilet that won second prize in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Reinvent the Toilet Challenge & Expo in China.
“This experience gave me a sense of achievement and encouraged me to
believe that I am the ‘right person’ for science and engineering,” said
Chao. “When I heard about the tragedy caused by the Bohai Bay oil spill
in China and the Deepwater Horizon spill in Gulf of Mexico, I felt a sense of responsibility as an environmental engineer to help clean up the mess.”
Chao completed a water and wastewater science and engineering
undergraduate degree at Chongqing University and an environmental
engineering master’s degree from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural
Sciences. As a master’s student, she gained additional experience
operating microscopy equipment through the Visiting Student Research
Internship Program at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
in Saudi Arabia. While researching doctoral programs, Chao was
fascinated by Dr. James Englehardt’s
water quality engineering research at the University of Miami and named
him as a preferred advisor on her application. Dr. Englehardt sent her
information about his GoMRI-funded project on developing a model to
track submerged oil and invited her to join his lab as a graduate
researcher.
Her Work
Oil that is chemically dispersed in the deep ocean forms small
droplets that can become trapped in constant density layers, where the
oil’s density is the same as the surrounding water’s density. Because
these layers don’t always stay at the same depth, Chao’s research began
with enhancing the SOSim model’s capability to predict the location of
submerged oil within these moving layers for a continuous oil spill.
Using Bayesian statistical methods, she inferred previously unknown
parameters in the oil trajectory model, including average velocity, the
horizontal dispersion coefficient, and the mass fraction of oil patches
(smaller oil masses that have detached from the initial spilled oil
mass). She then used existing Deepwater Horizon data as a case
study to validate the model’s ability to predict submerged oil
transport. “The model is currently using inputs about the oil’s
concentration and location to infer oil patches’ individual velocity and
dispersion coefficient, but these parameters will be updated over time
as new information is gathered,” she explained.
Chao is currently developing a sampling plan for oil responders that
will help them locate submerged oil during a spill. She is assessing
four sampling plans: random sampling, even sampling, adaptive sampling,
and the sampling strategy used during Deepwater Horizon response. For her experiments, the simulations from the SINTEF Oil Spill Contingency and Response (OSCAR)
model serve as a ‘real’ oil spill dataset. She applies the different
sampling plans to the OSCAR dataset and uses the enhanced SOSim model to
infer the oil distribution resulting from each sampling approach. She
then compares oil distributions from the SOSim model and the OSCAR model
to determine which sampling plan approach returns the most accurate
submerged oil distribution. “Although real spill observations are
limited, we can use OSCAR model outputs as ‘real’ data and compare our
predictions with the ‘real’ answer to determine which sampling plan is
the most effective in real spill scenarios,” said Chao.
So far, Chao has completed her initial analyses for the sampling plan
and will incorporate additional scenarios to determine if the plan
changes for various submerged oil distributions. She hopes to further
correct the SOSim model’s output and eventually enhance its capability
to include oil fate.
Her Learning
Working in Dr. Englehardt’s lab, Chao experienced an atmosphere that
encouraged independent and creative problem solving. “During the whole
project, Dr. Englehardt asked me to think what scientific contributions
will stand the test of time,” she said. “His slogan is ‘do whatever it
takes,’ which inspires me to always prepare for the best.” She recalled a
situation when applying Bayesian statistics where the model
consistently returned strange results. Despite debugging the software
dozens of times, she struggled to pinpoint the issues and worried that
her project would fail. She continuously referred to her Bayesian
materials and discussed various options with Dr. Englehardt until she
finally discovered that a function in the model was returning a value
smaller than the values the computer could represent. Relieved, she
incorporated a new function to resolve the issue and started seeing
results that made sense.
The GoMRI program gave Chao the opportunity to learn from and work
with top international oil spill researchers, exposing her to new
fields, methods, and tools. She and her colleagues presented their
research at the 2019 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science
Conference and the 2019 AMOP Technical Seminar on Environmental
Contamination and Response, where they received valuable feedback and
advice from fellow researchers. The team also gave two international
presentations for colleagues associated with Oil Spill Response Limited,
an industry-funded oil spill response cooperative. “Before my Ph.D.
research, I had no idea about subsurface oil modeling,” said Chao. “So
far, I have learned the current research theories and techniques and
developed an open-source application written in Python. The GoMRI
project helped me develop skills to create new theoretical methods and
to translate the theoretical models [for real use] in software
applications.”
Chao plans to apply her oil spill and data science knowledge to other
pollution issues, hopefully in academia where she can inspire students
the way that she was with science and engineering. “There’s a saying: I
know nothing except the fact of my ignorance,” joked Chao. “I will keep
updating my knowledge and skills and hopefully create something that can
withstand the test of time.” She believes that curiosity is a very
important part of scientific research.
Praise for Chao
Dr. Englehardt praised Chao’s team-player attitude, explaining that
she works so closely with her colleagues that their individual research
can be difficult to differentiate. He describes her as someone who is
eager to explore new approaches, challenge conventional wisdom, and come
up with innovative solutions. “[Our team] has come to know and love her
ever-cheerful and unselfish nature,” he said. “We look forward to
watching her career successes in the future.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Chao Ji and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team released a publication that incorporates the latest science that answers the top five most frequently asked oil spill questions by people who depend on a clean and healthy Gulf of Mexico.
Read Top Five Frequently Asked Questions about the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill to learn about seafood safety, wildlife impacts, cleanup techniques, dispersants and beach safety, and oil fate. Included are graphics that show seafood testing results by state and the percent of oil fate by category.
Read these related Sea Grant publications that give more details on oil spills and…
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team synthesizes
peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general audiences,
particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast. Sea Grant
offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently-held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Following Deepwater Horizon, there was concern about how the
oil spill might affect marine life. Since then, scientists have learned
more about how polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) affect marine
organisms, especially commercially and recreationally important
fisheries. For example, they found that that exposure to PAHs during a
fish’s early life stages (embryo and larvae) can induce sublethal impacts, such as reduced cardiac function, that affect the organism’s overall fitness and health.
Fabrizio Bonatesta
is contributing to this research by conducting genetic analyses on
oil-exposed zebrafish embryos to assess effects on kidney development
and function. “Although a freshwater fish, the zebrafish represents an
excellent model for this study because the normal development of the
zebrafish kidney is well-characterized,” Fabrizio explained. “We plan to
follow-up with similar studies on ecologically and economically
relevant species native to the Gulf of Mexico coast, such as red drum.”
Fabrizio grew up in Brindisi, Italy, a small port town where he often
spent his free time scuba diving, snorkeling, and enjoying the natural
beauty of the beach. Due to its strategic location on the Italian
Peninsula and Adriatic Sea, Brindisi is now a popular location for
industrial businesses, including chemical and petroleum industries.
Despite the economic swell, the influx of these businesses has affected
the area’s coastal environment and its residents. “Over the years, I’ve
witnessed multiple beached marine mammals and marine fauna degradation
possibly related to anthropogenic impacts on the Adriatic Sea
ecosystem,” Fabrizio said. “These damages to the marine habitat I hold
so close to my heart motivated me to improve my understanding of the
circumstances harming the Brindisi coast.”
Fabrizio completed dual undergraduate degrees in biology and marine
science at the University of Miami, where he developed a strong
foundation in aquatic toxicology and a broad understanding of marine
ecosystems. As he anticipated graduate studies, Fabrizio toured the
university’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and
chatted briefly with Dr. Edward Mager,
who was an assistant researcher at the time. Later, when Fabrizio
applied to graduate school, he learned that Dr. Mager was now at the
University of North Texas and assembling his lab team. Fabrizio reached
out and was surprised that Dr. Mager remembered their brief
conversation, which led to Fabrizio joining Dr. Mager’s team as his
first graduate student and pursuing an environmental science degree with
a toxicology focus. “I feel that achieving this degree will allow me to
maximize the contributions I can make to preserve the aquatic
environment,” said Fabrizio. “If I can better understand the impact that
toxicants are having on the environment, I will be able to help develop
solutions to improve the quality of aquatic life in Brindisi and other
regions.”
His Work
Fabrizio conducts transcriptomics studies using early life stage zebrafish, which previous research showed that exposure to Deepwater Horizon oil
may alter or impede transcription related to kidney health.
Transcription, the important first step of DNA gene expression, occurs
when a DNA segment is copied into RNA and encodes at least one gene.
“The kidney is an osmoregulatory and excretory organ found in
vertebrates, including fish, that controls the internal solute
concentration and helps excrete waste products,” said Fabrizio. “Due to
its vital physiological functions, any potential negative outcome to the
kidney’s development and functions could have adverse impacts on the
organism potentially leading to mortality.”
Fabrizio exposes zebrafish embryos to a water-crude oil mixture (at concentrations similar to those observed during Deepwater Horizon),
isolates their RNA, and quantifies differences in gene expression using
quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) compared to controls. So
far, he and his colleagues have analyzed 15 target genes (3 genes
selected based on previous mahi transcriptomic results and 12
hypothesis-driven genes), including their various transcription factors,
signaling proteins, and structural and functional proteins involved in
kidney development.
Although Fabrizio is still analyzing the collected data, he observed
that exposed zebrafish embryos exhibited significant changes in
transcription factors and structural and functional proteins compared to
controls. The transcription factors tended to exhibit decreased mRNA
expression, while functional and structural proteins related to kidney
development tended to exhibit increased mRNA expression.
Fabrizio is also using immunohistochemistry techniques to examine
zebrafish kidney morphology. Using an antibody against sodium-potassium
adenosine triphosphatase (a transporter enzyme highly expressed in the
kidney), he generates florescent staining within the kidneys. Then, he
examines the kidney’s structure using a fluorescence microscope to see
if there are morphological defects, which could suggest possible direct
or indirect impacts from oil exposure.
The next phase of Fabrizio’s research will examine how changing
salinity concurrent with oil exposure affects kidney function by
subjecting oil-exposed fish to salinity transfer challenges (exposure to
abrupt salinity changes). “The Gulf of Mexico coast is characterized by
estuaries and brackish waters, where the salt concentration frequently
fluctuates,” he said. “These changes might represent a stress to the
fishes inhabiting these waters. If it is not compensated for, the
salinity stress may interfere with the organism’s physiological
homeostasis and various biological processes, which could be lethal to
some.”
His Learning
Working with Dr. Mager taught Fabrizio that scientific research
requires a meticulous approach and the ability to troubleshoot problems
as they arise. Dr. Mager’s work ethic and enthusiasm for their research
greatly strengthened Fabrizio’s dedication to his own research goals.
“It is my duty as a scientist to review previous research papers and
study their methods to improve my own [methods],” said Fabrizio. “I
enjoy the process of uncovering new information and bonding with my
peers over the review process.”
Fabrizio said that GoMRI gives scientists who are interested in
researching the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem an opportunity to collaborate.
“Being able to connect and share our findings is crucial in the
scientific world,” he said. “The cooperation of all the people involved
with GoMRI research can provide important insights to prevent future
spills and restore the environment.”
Fabrizio would like to work with a private company in the United
States before returning to Italy. Eventually, he hopes to apply his
education towards creating an Italian organization of scientists from a
broad range of fields. He envisions that the organization would help
define environmental problems, inform public discussion surrounding
those issues, and support solutions improving environmental conditions
and related affects on human health.
Praise for Fabrizio
Dr. Mager describes Fabrizio as a quick-learner and a dedicated
worker whose independence exceeds that of other students at similar
stages in their research. “Fabrizio is very professional, considerate,
insightful, and a true team-player. It is a pleasure to have him in my
lab,” he said. “I believe he is a very promising young environmental
scientist, and I look forward to helping him progress through his Ph.D.
and observe his career beyond.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Fabrizio Bonatesta and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the RECOVER website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Deepwater Horizon incident affected more than 1,700 km
of Gulf of Mexico coastline. Chemical compounds from the oil spill posed
a risk to human health, especially children whose play behaviors often
bring them in direct contact with sand and water. To better understand
these risks, researchers are quantifying how children play at the beach
and combining those data with the different types and levels of oil
spill compounds that reached shorelines.
Larissa Montas
is developing an algorithm to predict the concentrations and
distributions of oil compounds along beaches. Her novel algorithm will
contribute to a larger risk assessment platform that assesses cumulative
and aggregate risks to children’s health from oil spill compounds.
These assessments can help inform future spill response decisions,
including beach closures.
Larissa describes science as her “first love” and can’t recall a time
when she wasn’t involved with science in some way. Growing up in a
seaside town, she created strong ties to the beach. The more she learned
about beach ecosystems, the more her curiosity about environmental
science deepened. Later, she completed undergraduate degrees in civil
and environmental engineering and a master’s degree in environmental
engineering at the University of Miami. While applying to doctoral
programs, Larissa received an email from one of her previous professors,
Dr. Helena Solo-Gabriele,
advertising a graduate research opportunity with her lab. Larissa
applied and joined Dr. Solo-Gabriele’s team investigating children’s
health risks to oil spill compounds in beach environments.
“I am deeply interested in exploring the integrated relationship
between the environment and human health, so our team’s research was a
perfect match to my interests,” said Larissa. “Children’s environmental
health is a topic close to my heart, as children are more vulnerable to
environmental health issues.”
Her Work
Following Deepwater Horizon, responders and researchers
collected tens of thousands of seawater, sediment, and atmospheric
samples. The first phase of Larissa’s research was to sort this
historical data. Using the General NOAA Operational Modeling Environment (GNOME)’s
predicted timing of oil spill impacts, she categorized the data by time
and space: impacted sites prior to oil impact, impacted sites after oil
impact, and unimpacted sites. She also assisted efforts led by Dr. Alesia Ferguson
to video record (with guardian permission) children’s beach play
activities and patterns to characterize children’s interactions with
sand and other potential sources of oil contamination. She is currently
developing an algorithm that will utilize a fate and transport model’s
outputs for future predictions of concentrations of individual toxic oil
compounds that might reach nearshore waters and sand.
The second phase of Larissa’s research focuses on analyzing oil compounds associated with Deepwater Horizon
that were identified as toxic. Using an oil spill fate and transport
model, she tracks how long it will take each compound to reach the beach
environment. Then, she incorporates existing data about the compound’s
physical and chemical properties to predict how much it should be
degraded when it reaches the nearshore environment. “Some of the oil
compounds won’t get there at all because they will be completely
degraded or become airborne before arrival,” explained Larissa. “But,
most of them will, and we need to know how much and what health risks
are associated with those concentrations.” She uses her results to
generate concentration-frequency distributions, a type of histogram that
represents how often a measured concentration falls within a certain
range in sand/marsh sediment, water, and tar. She then compares
concentration ratios of the different compounds to the original source
oil to identify changes in the oil’s overall composition by the time it
reaches the beach environment.
The third phase of Larissa’s research uses atmospheric remote sensing
to estimate the impacts of toxic airborne compounds associated with Deepwater Horizon on beach environments. She assists Dr. Naresh Kumar
to assess changes in remotely-sensed parameters immediately before and
after the spill, collocated with meteorological conditions and adjusted
using region specific regression. Using this approach, researchers can
develop beach-specific concentrations of airborne compounds for future
oil spill exposure studies.
Larissa’s research will contribute to an assessment platform
providing health risk information for children swimming or playing at
oil-impacted beaches. “Children’s behavioral patterns make them more
vulnerable than adults, and they have more-intimate contact with the
sand due to play activities such as burying themselves in the sand,”
said Larissa. “Our risk assessment platform aims to help improve
estimations about children’s exposures and risks to toxic oil compounds
and inform decision makers and first responders about toxic compound
concentrations when an oil slick approaches the nearshore environment.”
Her Learning
Working with Dr. Solo-Gabriele taught Larissa that the rigorous
scientific process can also be an exciting, creative, and collaborative
process. One of Larissa’s favorite memories was assisting with fieldwork
that quantified children’s beach play activities. The team worked from
early morning to late evening collecting data on over 100 children
playing at four beaches in Florida and Texas. “The whole BEACHES team
came together, and the PIs worked hard side-by-side with the students,”
said Larissa. “It was collaboration at its best and gave me the
opportunity to learn about the work that Co-PIs Dr. Alicia Ferguson and Dr. Kristi Mena are leading.”
Larissa’s journey has shown her that exploring different fields and
seeking guidance from mentors are important goals for students
considering a scientific career. “Students’ motivations are as varied as
they are as individuals,” she said. “A good way to start is to take
initiative and volunteer for a project that matches your interests. Many
professors like giving advice. Don’t be afraid to seek out mentors who
can help you understand where to take that first step.”
After graduating, Larissa wants to continue interdisciplinary
research investigating environmental contaminants and human health.
Praise for Larissa
Dr. Solo-Gabriele said that Larissa was at the top of her list when
recruiting graduate students for her GoMRI project. She described
Larissa as having “an engineering mind,” praising her methodical
approach to research and detailed-oriented personality. She explained
that Larissa’s laboratory experience gave her an advantage when
analyzing the complex chemical composition of oil in air, water, and
sediments. “She understands the details of the analytical techniques and
the difficulties that may occur when trying to compare the results from
different laboratories,” said Dr. Solo-Gabriele. “Larissa has submitted
a peer-reviewed journal article [based on her research] that provides
insight to the natural background concentrations of oil spill compounds,
which is useful for identifying the excess risks associated with oil
spill impacts along coastal regions.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Larissa Montas and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Shearing typically occurs along coastal marshes when strong storms
rip away the plants at the marsh edge. Because oiled shoreline sediment
is in a weakened state and less able to securely hold plants in place,
some Louisiana marshes that were heavily oiled following Deepwater Horizon are experiencing more shearing than usual. The loss of vegetation adversely affects the entire marsh ecosystem.
Patrick Rayle
uses metabarcoding methods to examine differences in meiofauna
biodiversity in oiled and unoiled Louisiana marshes that have
experienced shearing. His research can help us better understand how
meiofauna communities respond to these co-occurring stressors. He also
wants to help answer questions about whether losing the marsh edges
through erosion will diminish the diversity of this unique intertidal
ecosystem.
Patrick’s father is a biologist for a Louisiana environmental
consulting firm, which made biology a common dinner table topic that
Patrick really enjoyed growing up. Later, while completing a
marine-focused biological sciences undergraduate degree at Louisiana
State University, Patrick worked with Dr. Ken Brown, a Coastal Waters Consortium team member investigating how Deepwater Horizon oiling affected marsh microbial communities. Afterwards, he eagerly accepted a graduate research position with Dr. Lane Foil and Dr. Claudia Husseneder, who were also investigating Deepwater Horizon impacts on Louisiana marshes.
“I’ve lived my entire life just outside of New Orleans, and the
various disasters that the community experienced over the years had a
large impact on my life,” said Patrick. “When the oil spill hit, it was
extremely frustrating that, as a teenager, there really wasn’t much I
could do about it. Working on this research examining long-term effects
of the spill has been cathartic for me – it feels like I can make a
difference in the response the next time something like this happens.”
His Work
Patrick collects soil samples from six Barataria Bay marsh sites
using a Barrett soil coring device equipped with replaceable acrylic
cores for extracting large, consistently-sized soil samples with minimal
cross-contamination risks. He collects five samples at each site from
increasing elevations that are .05m apart. Then, he extracts DNA from
the samples and uses polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify the
short eukaryotic 18S region of the DNA and capture DNA sequences for the
microscopic meiofauna living in the soil.
Patrick applies Illumina Hi-seq DNA sequencing techniques to the
amplified region to reveal the exact sequence of each organism in the
sample. Using bioinformatics algorithms, he matches the regions with
previously identified and sequenced species available in a public DNA
database. This process generates a table of all the species matched to
the collected organisms, which Patrick uses to examine biodiversity
differences between healthy and sheared sites that experienced oiling.
Patrick’s early results show that sheared sites exhibited lower
biodiversity than intact sites, which he hypothesizes may have been
caused by plant loss associated with oiling. He is conducting a similar
study examining biodiversity differences between sites that experience
different salinity conditions. “I want to focus on salinity as well,
because of the proposed mid-Barataria Bay freshwater diversions,” he
explained. “These diversions are intended to help rebuild Louisiana
marshes by reconnecting them to the Mississippi River’s sediment input.
However, they will have a wide variety of effects on the marshes simply
by changing the salinity regime. I want to determine what changes in
meiofauna biodiversity are likely to happen in marsh areas with changing
salinity.”
His Learning
Patrick is grateful to Drs. Foil and Husseneder for their mentorship,
which improved important skills for his future scientific career. He
recalls that Dr. Foil hosted a writing course to hone his writing skills
for academic journals and that Dr. Husseneder patiently shared her
extensive genetics knowledge with him. They also encouraged Patrick to
attend the Second Benthic Invertebrate Taxonomy, Metagenomics, and Bioinformatics (BITMaB-2) Workshop, which gave him a solid foundation to conduct analyses using specialized bioinformatics programs.
“To me, GoMRI is about learning from and mitigating a major environmental disaster,” said Patrick. “The Deepwater Horizon
spill is too large of an issue to be solved by any one researcher, but
collectively we can make new discoveries that can aid in the recovery
and prevention of issues like this in the future.”
Patrick also realized that his early research experiences helped him
as a graduate student. “There are numerous opportunities available to
students at the undergraduate level, but you have to look for them,” he
said. “Many citizen science programs can give you a better idea of what
type of work is required to do research.”
Moving forward, Patrick wants to pursue an environmental science position in industry or government.
Praise for Patrick
Drs. Foil and Husseneder praised Patrick’s adaptability in difficult
conditions, saying that he applied his Eagle Scout skills and values to
many aspects of the research. “He confidently navigated the Gulf of
Mexico estuary, trekked through muddy marshes in all weather conditions,
fought through the jungle of bioinformatics, and showed great
perseverance in his endeavors,” said Dr. Husseneder. “Patrick is on his
way to becoming a well-rounded biologist, i.e., not afraid to tackle
mucky field work, big data, and computer command lines.”
Dr. Husseneder said that Patrick’s work is an example of the
collaborative nature of the GoMRI program since his research is
integrally linked with his fellow graduate students’ projects. “Data
from Patrick’s study dovetail with projects of former GoMRI scholars,
including food web studies on horse flies (Devika Bhalerao), marsh insects (Ben Aker), and sea side sparrows (Allison Snider).”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Patrick Rayle and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Scientists can use radium isotopes, which are released from oil in
seawater and decay at a specific rate, as geochemical tracers to
investigate marine processes involved in oil degradation. Matthew Kurpiel
is investigating how radium isotopes in surface oil slicks and
underwater oil plumes release into the surrounding seawater over time.
His findings will help develop a tool to determine how long oil spill
material will persist in the marine environment after it is released and
track where it goes.
As a teenager, Matt was afraid of open water but challenged himself
to go scuba diving during a family trip to Mexico. The surreal
experience inspired him to pursue a science career where he could
continue having exciting and challenging experiences. As a marine
science undergraduate student at Coastal Carolina University, Matt
assisted Dr. Richard Peterson
on projects using radium isotopes as tracers for various marine
processes. Dr. Peterson invited him to continue this work as a graduate
student. “Many times, I recall vivid images of the Deepwater Horizon
spill that were shown in the media. The memory of the horrific impacts
that such a disaster can have motivates me to work towards research that
can help mitigate future oil spill events,” said Matt. “This project is
the culmination of an idea that Dr. Peterson has been working on for
years. I’m just glad to be a part of it and learn from him and the
process.”
His Work
Matt’s research utilizes archived oil collected directly above the Macondo wellhead and oil collected by the ROV Odysseus
from a natural seafloor oil seep field (GC600). He prepared
oil-seawater mixtures (1 g oil to 10 L seawater ratio, approximating
hydrocarbon concentrations measured in Deepwater Horizon
sub-surface plumes) for each oil type, incubated them, and observed how
radium isotopes released into the surrounding seawater over time and
under different conditions. The incubations included an ocean surface
treatment (outdoors in ambient sunlight) or a deep-sea treatment (5° C
in dark refrigerators) to control for photodegradation processes and
with live or compromised microbes to control for microbial
biodegradation. Matt measured radium levels at multiple time points
using alpha and gamma spectrometry.
Matt focuses on the radium isotope Ra-224, one of the only radium
isotopes found in oil that is abundant and detectable immediately after
sample collection. His observations so far revealed that the Ra-224
release signature exhibited only minor differences between the surface
ocean and deep-sea treatments. This outcome surprised Matt and his
colleagues, who predicted that the combined photodegradation and
biodegradation processes in surface conditions would yield much higher
Ra-224 activity than sunless, cold conditions. Treatments using
compromised microbes showed higher Ra-224 activity than expected,
including in deep-sea treatments where lack of light and microbes should
have inhibited most or all degradation. “These results were surprising,
as we expected degradation processes driven by sunlight and microbes to
be the main control on radium release,” said Matt. “Our results suggest
that degradation processes may play some role but other factors, such
as ion exchange, may be at play as well.”
Matt observed that, for both oil types, Ra-224 activity typically
peaked within the first 24 – 48 hours followed by a decline for the
remaining incubation period. However, mixtures using Macondo wellhead
oil showed consistently higher Ra-224 activity than mixtures using
freshly collected oil from a seafloor seep. “We currently hypothesize
that different oil sources (presumably from different subsurface
reservoirs) vary in inherent radioactivity,” said Matt. “Previous
literature shows that biodegradation does happen in the oil reservoir
itself before the oil ever touches the water column, so one theory is
that the oil from the natural seep field is already further degraded
than Deepwater Horizon oil as a result of their source reservoirs.”
Matt will use the radium measurements to derive an activity ratio
representing how much time oil spends in seawater based on the radium’s
degree of decay. He is also developing a methodology for determining the
time-dependent radium signatures of different oil sources. His research
will support the project’s goal to create a conceptual model (dubbed
the “oil clock”) that uses the activity ratios to determine oil’s
exposure time in the ocean. “The oil clock tool can aid researchers in
other fields, such as those studying the timing of microbial responses
to oil spills,” said Matt. “It also provides oil spill cleanup managers
with a critical piece of information that will help them make the best
decisions on cleanup strategies.”
His Learning
Dr. Peterson helped Matt think like a scientist, conduct objective
investigations, and communicate his research with other scientists and
the public. Matt credited Dr. Peterson’s faith in him as key to helping
him grow as a scientist. He also treasures Dr. Peterson’s professional
and personal advice, which he expects will help in future endeavors.
Matt admired how scientists within the GoMRI community help one
another, such as when ECOGIG Principal Investigator Dr. Mandy Joye
served on his thesis committee and lent her expertise to their project.
Matt also recalled how grateful he and his colleagues were when, during
preparations for Tropical Storm Gordon, Dr. Leila Hamdan and her team
safely secured gear that they stored at the University of Southern
Mississippi’s Marine Research Center.
“None of this research would be possible without a massive amount of
help. Dr. Peterson, his current graduate students (my labmates), the
captain and crew of the R/V Point Sur, the Pelagic Research
Services ROV team, and GoMRI’s funding for this project all made this
research and the experiences I have had as a result possible,” said
Matt. “I want to extend my gratitude to all these people and groups, and
probably many more that I am forgetting right now, for all the effort
they put into making this project a success. Science is never a
one-person job.”
The two weeks that Matt spent at sea collecting oil samples was his
most memorable experience where he dealt with the strenuous conditions
aboard a research vessel, including seasickness, unusual sleep
schedules, and showering during 11-foot swells. However, it was worth it
to Matt to get first-hand deep-sea research experience. “The Gulf of
Mexico is a beautiful, biodiverse, and economically critical body of
water for both the United States and Mexico. Looking through the eyes
(i.e., cameras) of the ROV was incredible. The sights that my colleagues
and I were able to see on those two cruises are something that very few
people get to experience,” he said. “Through this research, I’ve been
given the opportunity to work towards protecting the Gulf, and I’m very
grateful for that opportunity.”
His Future
Matt hopes to find a research position that includes travel, working
in a dynamic setting, and being an active environmental steward. He
suggests that students considering a scientific career get involved with
research as early as possible, saying that the real learning happens
through hands-on experience. “Whether that experience is in fieldwork,
lab work, computer work, or a combination, working with real data and
real samples to answer questions is what environmental science is all
about,” he said. “Don’t let high-level mathematics and technical jargon
intimidate you, like they initially did me. If you can think critically,
proactively solve problems, and work hard, you can learn anything you
put your mind to.”
Praise for Matt
Dr. Peterson praised Matt’s critical and creative thinking skills and
his ability to make the research his own as he discovered novel
insights and developed creative hypotheses. “Matt’s enthusiasm drives
him every single day to learn more, try new analyses, and improve his
skills. He never bends to adversity – in fact, he uses it as
motivation!” said Dr. Peterson. “I’m proud of the scientist that Matt
has become while working on his master’s thesis through this GoMRI
project!”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Matthew Kurpiel and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program
recognizes graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded
projects and builds community for the next generation of ocean science
professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Oil-water interfaces, such as those formed by marine oil spills or
natural ocean oil seeps, are teeming with bacterial activity. Some
bacterial species in those interfaces form biofilms that help break up
oil, which enhances biodegradation. The interfaces themselves can also
significantly influence how bacteria behave, often trapping them or
altering their natural movements.
Jiayi Deng
tracks different bacteria movement patterns at the point where oil and
water meet to explore key processes involved with interactions between
oil spills and marine microorganisms. Information that she is uncovering
about bacterial propulsion, structure, and interactions with interfaces
and other bacteria can help researchers design bio-mimic microrobots
and develop strategies to guide their motion towards oil spills for oil
collection.
Jiayi’s parents are engineers who sparked her desire to solve
real-world problems at a young age. She described chemical engineering
as an art that uses fundamental ideas and physics to interpret natural
processes and can be applied to all aspects of human life, including
pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and energy and environmental
engineering. Jiayi completed a chemical engineering undergraduate degree
at Dalian University of Technology and a chemical and biomolecular
engineering master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania.
As a master’s student, Jiayi learned about soft matter (such as
liquids and colloids) while working with polymers in Dr. Daeyeon Lee’s
Soft Materials Research and Technology lab. She later took a course
taught by Dr. Kathleen Stebe,
a co-principal investigator with the GoMRI-funded DROPPS consortium,
that described how surface energy can dominate some interfacial
phenomena and what that means for designing functional materials.
“I was fascinated by the complex structures formed on interfaces and
how these phenomena can be explained using the physics and fundamental
concepts of colloid and interface science,” said Jiayi. “I contacted Dr.
Stebe and gained a great opportunity to join her GoMRI research into
bacterial dynamics at the oil-water interface as a Ph.D. student.”
Her Work
Jiayi studies the swimming behavior of lab-cultured Pseudomonas aeruginosa
(strain PAO1), a marine species that forms an elastic biofilm at the
oil-water interface and consumes hydrocarbons. She conducts her
experiments in a 1-centimeter cylinder with an aluminum bottom half and a
Teflon top half that intersect in the middle, creating a planar
interface. After adding bacteria suspended in an aqueous solution and
then hexadecane to form an oil-water interface, she uses an upright
bright-field microscope and a high-speed camera to observe the
interfacial interactions and capture one-minute videos at 60 frames per
second.
Next, Jiayi interprets the bacteria’s position in each frame using a
multiple particle tracking algorithm to determine their motion. She
observes several metrics that provide insight into bacterial swim
behavior: swim speed, the curvature of their circular path, how fast
they complete a circular path, time spent moving forward and backward,
and the dynamics of different bacteria types. So far, she has observed
four distinct trajectories affecting how bacteria move: (1) movement
driven by collision, (2) swimming in curly paths, (3) swimming in
pirouette motions, and (4) interactions with other bacteria that enter
and exit the interface freely.
Jiayi developed a method to analyze hydrodynamic interactions between
the bacteria and the interface. She places passive tracer particles at
the interface before adding hexadecane and then measures the correlated
motion between bacteria and passive tracers to determine how active
bacteria displace tracer particles. “This displacement field shows how
bacteria interact with passive colloids (inactive suspensions of
particles) and small molecules,” explained Jiayi. “By measuring their
correlated motions, we can directly measure the hydrodynamic flow field
around the swimming bacteria at small time scales.”
Using this method, Jiayi found that swimming microbes greatly enhance
interfacial mixing by a factor of three. She observed two main
dynamics: (1) bacteria that are trapped at the interface perform curly,
diffusive, and pirouette motions and (2) bacteria that freely enter and
exit the interface closely interact with the trapped bacteria. “The
persistent curvilinear trajectories (i.e., curly or pirouette
trajectories) of interface-trapped particles differ significantly from
motions in the bulk. Interface trapping makes these motions quite
stable, creating a convective flow around the swimmers,” explained
Jiayi. “These microswimmers can generate flows in both the interface and
the surrounding phases, breaking the oil spill into smaller droplets
that are easier for microbes near the interface to digest.”
Her Learning
Dr. Stebe helped Jiayi understand the value of being passionate and
thinking creatively beyond the original research goal, which typically
becomes broader as an experiment develops. Jiayi and her colleagues
discovered additional bacteria behaviors at the interface related to
their adhesion state and hydrodynamical interactions with the oil-water
interfaces. “We were excited by their different modes of motion and
studied these motions using hydrodynamics and interfacial science, but
we also wanted to explore their applications on interfacial transport,”
said Jiayi. “Interacting with people from other fields and breaking the
patterns and traditional ways of thinking helped us reach more creative
solutions.”
Her Future
Jiayi hopes to find a post-doctoral position in academia where she
can continue conducting chemical or biological engineering research.
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Jiayi Deng and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the DROPPS website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Predicting where oil will go can be one of the most challenging aspects of marine oil spill response. Following Deepwater Horizon, research
showed that strong currents capable of transporting oil often appear
along ocean fronts (the interface between river like-water masses that
have different temperatures, salinities, or densities). However, our
limited understanding about ocean front formation and the influence of
turbulence, upper ocean mixing, and submesoscale currents (which can cause floating material to cluster and then spread out) inhibits the accuracy of ocean transport prediction models. Abigail Bodner
uses mathematical theory and large eddy simulation (LES) models to
improve our understanding about how different turbulence and mixing
processes affect the behavior and development of ocean fronts.
Abigail grew up in Israel, where she taught and tutored high school
math before pursuing theoretical mathematics at Tel Aviv University.
Although she enjoyed her studies, she felt like something was missing.
She added earth sciences as a second major and fell in love with
atmospheric and oceanic fluid dynamics, which allowed her to use
mathematical tools to describe natural phenomena. She completed an
atmospheric dynamics master’s degree at Tel Aviv University, where she
researched how large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns can cause
blocking events associated with temperature fluxes for certain
topographies.
Although her master’s research focused heavily on theoretical models,
its applications extended to pressing environmental concerns such as
heat waves and harsh cold winters. Abigail felt motivated to find a
physical oceanography doctoral program that would allow her to combine
theory and modeling for research addressing environmental impacts. A
professor working with Dr. Baylor Fox-Kemper
at Brown University recommended that Abigail contact Fox-Kemper related
to his research adapting LES modeling for float, tracer, and surfactant
applications.
“After contacting Dr. Fox-Kemper, he responded within minutes, and we
set up a Skype meeting where he told me all about the Gulf of Mexico
Research Initiative,” Abigail said. “I was eager to be part of a larger
research community working hard to help protect Gulf of Mexico
ecosystems and coastal communities from environmental disasters.” She
joined Dr. Fox-Kemper’s research group as a Ph.D. student, while also
working towards a second master’s degree in applied mathematics.
Her Work
Abigail’s research started with paper, a pencil, and mathematical
theory. She knew that previous research established a numerical theory
that describes general ocean front dynamics but also knew that it lacked
turbulence parameters. She modified the theory to include her
hand-written equations that account for submesoscale (typically 102 – 104
meters in length and lasting hours to days in time scales)
turbulence and then consulted a numerical computer program to solve
the higher-level equations. As she used numerical methods to resolve the
modified theoretical equations, she noticed an interesting pattern:
turbulence from vertical mixing processes appeared to strengthen the
front, while turbulence from horizontal mixing processes appeared to
weaken it.
“It’s important to note that whether this pattern is true or not in a
more realistic environment isn’t clear because the theory is very
idealized. Factors like waves, wind, and cooling and heating can all be
very chaotic, and in order to apply them cleanly in the theory you have
to simplify them,” explained Abigail. “By distinguishing them into
horizontal and vertical processes, we’re able to quantify their roles in
affecting the front. But, if we really want to understand what they are
doing, then we need a model like the LES that can simulate each of
these processes.”
Abigail is validating her modified theory using a LES developed by Dr. Fox-Kemper and his collaborators (Dr. Jim McWilliams,
University of California Los Angeles; Dr. Peter Sullivan, National
Center for Atmospheric Research; and Dr. Luke Van Roekel, Los Alamos
National Laboratory). She incorporates as many missing parameters as
possible into the simulation and compares its results with the results
of her modified theory.
Abigail explained that, while LES can help validate her numerical
theory, her theory can also help researchers understand the LES results.
“My theoretical equation can give us a road map of how to interpret
these large eddy simulations. It can help us understand what is
happening with the vertical and horizontal processes by stripping away
their complexity and presenting them in a more-simplified world,” she
said. “If we look at the LES’s more-complicated scenarios but still have
in mind what we know happens under simpler conditions, it can provide
clarity and help us be more focused when we analyze these complex
simulations.”
Abigail plans to implement her theory into global climate models as
an improved submesoscale parameterization that contributes to more
accurate climate model predictions. Climate models use submesoscales to
help determine the depth of the ocean mixed layer (the uppermost ocean
layer), which helps define how the atmosphere and ocean will interact.
Abigail explained that her two-year-old son is her greatest source of
motivation to help enhance climate models. “Looking forward at climate
predictions, it is hard to imagine what kind of world my son and future
generations will have,” she said. “Being part of climate research is
exciting, but it also comes with a sense of obligation to improve our
current understanding of the climate system, including climate theory
and predictions.”
Her Learning
Dr. Fox-Kemper has been a constant support and motivator for Abigail
and has helped her strengthen her writing and communication skills. She
further honed these skills teaching oceanography and climate science
courses through Brown University’s Summer@Brown program.
Working with Dr. Fox-Kemper taught Abigail that she must dig deep to
gain a more complete understanding of a scenario’s underlying physics
while also connecting with bigger picture questions, existing
literature, and community interests. Abigail’s experiences helped her
gain a deeper appreciation for the scientific and peer-review processes
involved in publishing. “[In research], you don’t always end up doing
what you set out to do, but the result will probably be more interesting
than anyone could have anticipated. It is exciting and confusing, which
is part of what makes it so great,” said Abigail. “It is inspiring to
be part of a community that cares deeply about the science as well as
the coastal communities and ecosystems, which is what brings the GoMRI
community together.”
Her Future
Abigail hopes to find a postdoc position that includes teaching and
research where she can connect science to people’s lives, especially
research related to sea level rise and its effects on coastal
communities. She encourages students considering a scientific career not
to feel intimidated by unfamiliar terminology. “It’s important to
remember that, although it may be a slow learning curve, eventually you
will learn how to use these terms yourself,” she said. “Have confidence
in yourself, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Most everyone will be
excited to discuss their work with new students. You just need to work
up the courage to ask. No question is a dumb question!”
Praise for Abigail
Dr. Fox-Kemper praised Abigail’s sharp mathematical mind. He recalled
that initially she was more comfortable manipulating equations than
interpreting data but quickly grew into an astute data analyst. “She is
very quick to appreciate the significance of subtleties between
different approaches to solving problems and has developed some new
methods to address problems that have stumped theoreticians for decades –
as well as finding some new problems of her own!” he said.
Dr. Fox-Kemper expressed admiration for Abigail’s ability to balance
family and work, a feat he says was often difficult for him. “She keeps
making progress on research and finding time to take opportunities to
teach [while also spending time with her family],” he said. “She is a
great role model for her kids and for other students thinking about
becoming parents.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Abigail Bodner and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program
recognizes graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded
projects and builds community for the next generation of ocean science
professionals. Visit the CARTHE website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Meiofauna are microscopic marine organisms that live between grains
of sand in ocean, coastal, river, and stream sediments and provide
important services such as recycling organic material in the sediment
that contribute to healthy marine ecosystems. Additionally, meiofauna
are intermediary consumers between microbes and prey of larger organisms
in marine food webs, and as such, can be early indicators of
environmental disturbances, such as oil spill pollution, that could
affect broader ecosystem health.
Joseph Sevigny
uses genetic research techniques to expand our knowledge about
meiofauna taxonomy and improve the way we analyze and monitor these
communities. His work to develop novel methods for efficient genomic
analysis can reduce the time it takes researchers and responders to
survey and monitor how meiofaunal communities recover from environmental
disturbances.
Joe has been fascinated with understanding how the natural world
works since he was a child. Reading scientific authors such as Matt
Ridley and Richard Dawkins sparked his interest in the engaging world of
genetics, genomics, and computational biology. He began his
undergraduate career as a Biology and Environmental Science dual major
at New England College and conducted bioinformatics and genetics
research full-time during the summer of his junior year. He collaborated
with several institutions, including the University of New Hampshire’s
Hubbard Center for Genome Studies, where he learned about Dr. Kelley Thomas’s GoMRI-funded research characterizing the taxonomy of benthic organisms such as meiofauna.
Joe’s work during that summer solidified his passion for comparative
genomics research, and he later joined Dr. Thomas’s lab as a Ph.D.
student. “Meiofauna don’t have the means to move to a different location
after an environmental disturbance – they are stuck dealing with
whatever comes into their homes,” he explained. “I want to help improve
the way we analyze and monitor these communities through DNA sequencing
and highlight their importance for investigating the impacts of oil
spills.”
His Work
The first and most challenging step of Joe’s research was collecting
and preparing the meiofauna for genomic analysis. Because most meiofauna
species have not undergone genetic sequencing, he had to start from
scratch. Joe and his colleagues developed techniques to sequence trace
amounts of DNA from meiofauna but still needed to taxonomically identify
them before they could proceed.
Since they are investigating a broad group of meiofauna (26 of the 35
known animal phyla), they needed help from taxonomic experts, so the
team coordinated workshops such as the Benthic Invertebrate Taxonomy, Metagenomics, and Bioinformatics (BITMaB)
with invited meiofaunal taxonomists from around the world. During the
workshop, attendees collected and identified Gulf of Mexico meiofauna,
which allowed them to sequence an extremely broad range of meiofaunal
groups.
“This monumental task would have been impossible without
collaborating with traditional taxonomists, who collect and identify
individual animals using light microscopy and other techniques,” said
Joe. “Through the workshops, the taxonomists got to learn how we analyze
the data during bioinformatics sessions, and we were able to learn a
lot about the process of collecting and identifying a diverse array of
meiofaunal species. It was a win-win for us all!”
Joe extracted and prepared DNA from the identified specimens for
genetic sequencing, which provided him with short DNA fragments. He then
used bioinformatics principles to develop his own computer code for
existing software to analyze the genetic data. His program assembled the
short DNA fragments into complete genomes, expanding them to the size
of a chromosome. He then analyzed the genes in the large sequences to
determine what functions the meiofauna have, the biochemical processes
they are capable of, and their evolutionary relationships.
Joe’s research will help reduce the time and effort involved in monitoring meiofaunal communities. Rather than going through the expensive, time-consuming taxonomic identification process, future researchers can sequence DNA directly from an environmental sample, link the resulting sequences to the database, and infer which meiofauna are present. “This process will allow for faster, broader, and more-accurate scale analyses of meiofaunal communities and populations than ever before, allowing us to determine which areas of the Gulf are most severely impacted and focus our recovery efforts on those places,” explained Joe. “Over time, we can utilize the same data to monitor how these communities are recovering and construct baseline data across the Gulf and around the world.”
His Learning
Joe worked on different projects during his time with Dr. Thomas,
including research focusing on animal phylogeny and evolution,
speciation, and developmental expression experiments. These diverse
projects helped balance his background in computational genomics. The
genomic workshops gave Joe an opportunity to share his computational
methods knowledge while learning from experts in different fields and
were a highlight of his graduate studies.
“I find it extremely rewarding that I can incorporate my skillset in
molecular biology towards increasing our understanding and awareness of
anthropogenic impacts,” he said. “Teaching a topic I really enjoy and
sharing my knowledge with the next generation of scientists is extremely
rewarding and motivating. These experiences have really shown me how
much science benefits from an environment in which scientists from an
extremely broad set of backgrounds come together for a common goal.”
His Future
Joe plans to continue his genomics research as a post-doc and eventually serve in a faculty position.
Praise for Joe
Dr. Thomas explained that Joe has a “uniquely engaging quality” that
makes it easy for him to work alongside diverse collaborators from other
fields. He particularly recalled Joe’s appreciation for the taxonomists
and ecologists who participated in the workshops and their reciprocal
appreciation for Joe’s ability to teach them the bioinformatics needed
to utilize his team’s genomic data. “I believe his success stems from
the fact that Joe is genuinely interested in their work,” he said.
Dr. Thomas also praised Joe’s teaching ability. Joe teaches a
week-long summer course for college instructors called Train the
Trainers (T3), which is based off of the bioinformatics workshop he
helped develop for the GoMRI project. “Joe loves what he does, and it
shows. He always receives rave reviews and requests to teach,” said Dr.
Thomas. “He has contributed mightily to our GOMRI project and has a
great career ahead of him using the skills that he developed during this
project.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Joe Sevigny and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Authorities closed large portions of the Gulf of Mexico following Deepwater Horizon
to minimize oil contamination of fish and seafood products. Changes in
commercial and recreational fisher behavior during the closure may have
caused biases in the 2010 fisheries data used to assess fish populations
and establish annual quotas and catch limits.
Xuetao Lu
is developing a novel modeling approach that uses statistics and
computer science techniques to predict the spatial distribution of fish
species. His work is part of a larger effort to expand an existing West
Florida Shelf simulation model to include more fish species and fishing
fleets and increase its simulated range across the Gulf. The expanded
model will help researchers predict the spatial patterns of fleets and
marine species under various scenarios, including oil spill events.
Xuetao’s favorite pastime as a teenager was playing maze games,
searching for the best route as well as the correct one. While working
towards his systems engineering undergraduate degree at the National
University of Defense Technology in China, he realized that his
fascination with mazes stemmed from a passion for understanding complex
systems. “I’m fascinated by the beauty of statistics, which is the
origin of many methodologies for working with complex systems,” he said.
“My strong sense of curiosity led me to pursue a doctoral degree in
statistics.”
Later, Xuetao was searching for graduate research opportunities, and a friend recommended that he look into Dr. Steven Saul’s
research investigating quantitative approaches to Gulf of Mexico
natural resource management. The team’s focus on how fisheries closures
and oil pollution may have affected resource management following Deepwater Horizon excited
Xuetao and made him eager to see his statistical research inform policy
development and resource management decision-making. He applied for a
doctoral research position in Dr. Saul’s lab and joined his team in
2017.
His Work
Xuetao’s ultimate goal is to develop spatial distributions of fish
abundance by species, which the team will use in their model simulations
of fish abundance and biomass locations. His approach utilizes bottom
longline survey data (for deep water species) and video survey data (for
shallow water species) collected by the National Marine Fisheries
Service (NMFS). NMFS conducts independent video surveys each year to
measure fish abundance; however, low detection rates generate data that
is zero inflated, meaning that zero or near-zero fish appear in each
sample. As a result, it is difficult for researchers calculating spatial
distribution to utilize this valuable data.
Xuetao addressed this challenge by developing statistical models
based on empirical maximum likelihood analysis, a technique that
estimates how many fish live in an area despite low detection rates.
Then, he developed a random smoothing method that uses variance and
credibility factors to identify and eliminate uncertainty within the
data and generate high-quality data without high uncertainty. The random
smoothing method also converted the maximum estimate number of fish
into the maximum estimate density of fish, which researchers can use to
determine spatial distribution.
Xuetao combined the improved data with habitat information (such as
depth, sediment type, or rugosity) gathered from oil company surveys so
that his model could determine how different habitat features affect
fish’s spatial distribution and how this relationship can predict
spatial distribution in unsampled areas. The model utilized and
integrated the results of thirty-three machine learning models designed
to handle non-linear problems such as the relationship between habitat
and spatial distribution. Finally, Xuetao ran his results through a
hierarchical Bayesian model combined with the Gaussian process to
correct a prediction bias that did not account for pollution and
overfishing.
Comparing traditional linear model results and non-linear model
predictions, Xuetao found that his non-linear model provided a more
accurate and reasonable ecological overview and offered
higher-resolution patterns than traditional linear predictions. His next
step is to expand his non-linear model to analyze spatial distribution
over time, which will help researchers track long-term distribution
changes.
His Learning
Xuetao views Dr. Saul as a role model and mentor who taught him
important research techniques to break down complex systems, including
asking simple but meaningful questions. “Most importantly, Dr. Saul
taught me how to improve my communication skills, how to collaborate
with others, and how to build up my own networking,” he said. He applied
these communication skills at the 2018 and 2019 Gulf of Mexico Oil
Spill and Ecosystem Science conferences, where he presented his
research. “I appreciate these opportunities to engage and communicate
with scientists from the GoMRI science community,” he said. “The most
exciting moments were when I got feedback and suggestions from other
experienced researchers. The peer recognition inspired and encouraged me
to keep walking forward.”
His Future
Xuetao looks forward to using his statistics background in a wide
range of scientific and technological applications, especially as a
university postdoc or faculty member. “As celebrated mathematician and
statistician John W. Tukey said, the best thing about being a
statistician is getting to play in everyone’s backyard. That makes being
a statistician so much fun!” said Xuetao. “My advice? Interest is the
best teacher. Find the field that you are most interested in – the
sooner the better!”
Praise for Xuetao
Dr. Saul praised Xuetao’s hardworking personality and ability to work
independently or in a group. He highlighted Xuetao’s communication
skills, particularly his clear delivery and ability to distill complex
information to an understandable level for various audiences and his
intelligent and creative approaches to the team’s research. “Xuetao is
able to independently distill a difficult quantitative problem down into
its components and creatively apply statistical theory to solve the
problem,” said Dr. Saul. “His innovative contributions and deep
knowledge of mathematical and statistical theory play a critical role in
the success of our project.” He emphasized that Xuetao’s methodologies
represent important contributions toward a novel approach for
understanding and computing the spatiotemporal abundance of living
marine resources. “Xuetao is an emerging early career mathematician and
statistician, who will be successful in whichever endeavor he pursues. I
very much look forward to continued collaborations with him,” concluded
Dr. Saul.
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Xuetao Lu and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the [consortia website] to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill overlapped with the spawning
activities of many ecologically and economically important tuna
species. However, the significant knowledge gap regarding early life
stage tuna taxonomy and distribution makes it difficult to understand
how the spill may have affected them.
As a graduate student, Nina Pruzinsky examined the abundance, distribution, and morphological characteristics of larval and juvenile tunas (Scombridae)
and identified primary drivers of their distribution to help fill this
gap and inform future management and conservation efforts.
Nina discovered her interest in environmental research during high
school class trips to Virginia and Jamaica. She and her classmates
surveyed diverse environments, such marshes and coral reefs, and learned
about the marine and terrestrial organisms living in them. These
hands-on experiences along with a freshman ocean science class at the
University of Delaware prompted her to pursue an environmental science
degree. As an undergraduate student, she studied in the Cayman Islands,
obtained an AAUS Scientific Diver certification, and interned in Dr.
Mark Warner’s Algal Physiology Research Laboratory, where she studied
coral symbiotic dinoflagellates. However, Nina realized that she was
most interested in researching poorly studied fish taxa.
After reading several of Dr. Tracey Sutton’s deep-sea research articles, Nina applied for an open graduate research position at his Nova Southeastern University Oceanic Ecology Lab. When she began working with Sutton, he was leading the DEEPEND Consortium, which had just begun their work assessing how the Deepwater Horizon oil
spill may have damaged the Gulf of Mexico’s little-explored deep-sea
ecosystems. “My personal goal is to provide information that can help
maintain and assess populations and ecosystems,” said Nina. “Seeing how
DEEPEND was designed for new discoveries and assessing the oil-damaged
water column drove my decision to work with Dr. Sutton.”
Her Work
Juvenile tunas are particularly difficult to identify to the species
level (there are 15 tuna species worldwide). Although larval tunas are
well-described, juveniles grow out of many diagnostic larval
characteristics but have not yet developed the adult features needed for
identification. Nina examined the morphological characteristics of over
900 larval and juvenile tuna (Scombridae) specimens collected
during seven northern Gulf of Mexico research cruises in 2010 – 2011 and
2015 – 2017. She identified each larval and juvenile tuna specimen to
the lowest taxonomic level possible and confirmed her identifications
using genetic barcoding. Then, she identified physical characteristics
unique to each undescribed juvenile tuna species, finding that body
ratios and spine/fin ray counts were key morphological characteristics
for identification.
Nina calculated species-specific body ratios using measurements of
the head, upper jaw, snout, eyes, and fins. She then observed if and how
these ratios changed as early-life-stage tuna matured. Combining
reported ratios and her new ratios, she determined the definitive
physical characteristics that can be used to identify different juvenile
tuna species. “Species-specific body ratios can either be used in
conjunction with morphological characteristics or on their own,” said
Nina. “For example, a known diagnostic feature of larval and (now)
juvenile Acanthocybium solandri (wahoo) is that their snout is twice the size of their eye diameter. However, A. solandri can also be identified using fin ray counts. Both approaches are useful, depending on the condition of the specimen.”
Nina determined the faunal composition and standardized abundance for
tuna samples collected during the seven research cruises. She observed
that Euthynnus alletteratus (little tunny), Thunnus atlanticus (blackfin tuna), Auxis thazard (frigate mackerel), and Katsuwonus pelamis
(skipjack tuna) were the most-abundant species in the analyzed samples.
Using sampling location, Nina modeled the distribution of these species
and statistically compared their abundance patterns to variables that
may drive early life stage assemblage structure and distribution,
including location and depth, time of day and year, and oceanographic
features such as salinity and temperature. Although each tuna species
exhibited a different vertical, seasonal, and horizontal distribution
pattern, Nina observed that seasonality and species-specific
environmental preferences (such as salinity level) were the main drivers
of spatial distribution across the Gulf of Mexico.
“More oil rigs are being added throughout the Gulf, especially in
waters that overlap with tuna spawning sites, increasing the chance of
another spill. As larvae are planktonic [only float, not swim], they
will not be able to avoid an oil spill,” said Nina. “Understanding the
distribution, drivers of assemblage structure, and faunal composition of
Gulf of Mexico tunas will assist management and conservation efforts,
help assess how an oil spill impacts vulnerable early life stages, and
potentially predict future year class strength.”
Her Learning
Nina participated in two deep-sea research cruises and two DEEPEND
ichthyoplankton research cruises while working in Dr. Sutton’s lab.
During these expeditions, she led the data management and cruise
planning efforts, interacted with colleagues from other institutions,
and gained hands-on experience with the sample collection process.
“Working with DEEPEND, there is always a chance to see something new,
whether that is new to science, new to the Gulf, or new to my own
personal experiences,” she said. “The excitement and comradery among the
science crew was contagious, and I was constantly learning through
either my own experiences or from hearing my colleagues’ stories. I
would not trade that experience for the world!”
Nina said that being a part of the GoMRI community was extremely
rewarding, especially learning from and sharing her research with
scientists from other fields and projects. She said, “So far, I have
presented at several conferences and was an invited speaker at the 2019
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science Conference in New
Orleans, LA. It is an incredible experience learning about the research
going on within the Gulf of Mexico and telling my own story.”
Her Future
Nina completed her master’s degree in 2018 and is continuing her
DEEPEND research as a Research Associate and lab manager in Dr. Sutton’s
Oceanic Ecology Lab. When she isn’t on a research cruise, she manages
multiple large databases, oversees sample collection and processing,
writes cruise reports, participates in education and outreach efforts,
and trains graduate research assistants, students, and volunteers. She
hopes to continue working with people within and outside of academia and
apply her growing research and managerial skills to her future career.
Nina suggested that students pursuing an environmental science or
marine biology career should volunteer or intern in different
laboratories to gain experience in various scientific fields. She
reflected that her own career began working with dinoflagellates but
eventually led her to deep-sea and tuna research. “Get involved!” she
said. “You never know where your interests will take you.”
Praise for Nina
Dr. Sutton said that Nina impressed him from her first interview with
her academic record, writing skills, talent, drive, and joyful
personality. “After I advertised the first two research assistant
positions for DEEPEND, I sorted the applications into two folders: Nina
Pruzinsky and everyone else,” he joked. It was no surprise to him when
Nina became a pillar in his lab while also tackling challenging
morphological analyses and conducting advanced biophysical modeling.
“Simply put, if I had a nickel for every time a troubled student or
even a DEEPEND co-PI uttered the phrase ‘I’ll ask Nina,’ I could
probably fund another student,” said Sutton. “I was dreading the thought
of lab operations without her after she defended her thesis and was so
overjoyed when she chose to stay with us as a Research Associate. I feel
comfortable speaking for both myself and every co-PI when I say that
she has been one of DEEPEND’s brightest stars.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Nina Pruzinsky and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the DEEPEND website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team released a publication that outlines what scientists have learned about how oil exposure affects birds. Using peer-reviewed research that covers oil spills around the world, the bulletin describes various effects ranging from birds directly exposed to oil to impacts on breeding and migration habits.
Read Birds of a Feather – Coping with Oil
to learn how scientists are studying how birds respond to pollution.
The bulletin includes research from the Natural Resource Damage
Assessment process during Deepwater Horizon that details the
types and numbers of birds affected by that event. It also includes
information that can help inform response to future oil spills, such as
lessons learned from cleaning oiled birds.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team synthesizes
peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general audiences,
particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast. Sea Grant
offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently-held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
************
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Estuarine marshes in coastal Louisiana face numerous threats such as
sea-level rise, salt water intrusion, and contamination threats such as
oil spills that can lead to marsh loss and changing habitats. Ben Aker
collects insects from different habitats within coastal marshes and
assesses their abundance and biodiversity. His research will help
identify potential marsh health indicator species and generate baseline
data for future research into marsh loss and habitat restoration
efforts.
Ben’s interest in science was fueled by the passionate professors he
met as a biology undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin
Whitewater. “I’ve never talked to a professor who wasn’t enthusiastic
about their research, and I want to have a similar level of excitement
about my work,” he said. Ben pursued a degree in ecology, evolution, and
animal behavior and conducted undergraduate research on the
distribution of predatory robber flies. He is continuing entomology
research as a Louisiana State University master’s student studying
coastal insects and their salinity-related distributions with Dr. Lane Foil and Dr. Claudia Husseneder’s coastal insect ecology team, which studies Deepwater Horizon impacts on Louisiana marshes.
“I want to use interesting organisms to help answer important
ecological questions,” said Ben. “Our research seeks to highlight the
importance of coastal insects and their potential use as tools for marsh
conservation and ecological research.”
His Work
Ben’s research examines plant and insect biodiversity along salinity
gradients using data collected during a year-long study (July 2018 –
June 2019). He focuses on 18 Louisiana marsh sites in Barataria Bay and
Caillou Bay designated as either low-, mid-, or high-salinity based on
historical data. Using sweep nets, he collects insects monthly and
identifies each insect to the family level. He also assesses average
ground cover, dominant plant life, and biodiversity differences between
salinity levels at all sites. He then uses the EstimateS biodiversity
software to determine biodiversity in areas with different salinities
and creates a rarefaction curve for each salinity level. Rarefaction
curves plot the number of families observed in relation to the sample
size and the estimated total families to determine if a sampling effort
can sufficiently assess diversity.
Preliminary results from data collected during the first five months
show that each salinity level had differences in overall plant
composition, but Spartina cordgrass species consistently dominated ground cover (Spartina patens at low- and mid-salinity sites and Spartina alterniflora at high-salinity sites). Chironomids (non-biting midges) were the most abundant insect family at low-salinity sites but were replaced by Delphacids
(plant hoppers) as salinity increased. Results from the insect
biodiversity indices suggest that family-level biodiversity decreased
with increasing salinity. Further sampling is required to adequately
assess insect diversity, which will come as Ben processes the remaining
data. “Overall, we captured a conservative estimate of approximately
89.3 – 99.3% of families present,” explained Ben. “This high percentage
of families collected is expected to increase as we complete a full year
of sampling.”
Ben utilizes his research findings to identify potential
bioindicators of marsh health. He observed that most insect families
appeared at all salinity levels and that only rare species were unique
to a single salinity level. Since rare species are inefficient
bioindicators, he instead uses a specificity measure (how well the
potential bioindicator predicts the salinity level) and a fidelity
measure (how likely it is that the potential bioindicator will be
encountered at that salinity level) to associate insect families with
different salinities. So far, he has associated fifteen insect families
among the different salinity levels and combinations of salinity levels.
“It is likely that these insect families are associated with [certain] salinities due to life cycle requirements or herbivory of specific plants,” said Ben. “For example, two families associated with low-salinity sites (Chironomidae and Coenagrionidae) have aquatic juveniles to which higher salinity levels may be detrimental, and a family associated with high-salinity sites (Blissidae) is represented in our collection by a single species that feeds primarily on Spartina alterniflora.”
Ben is currently identifying members of the associated bioindicator
families to the species level. He and Co-Principal Investigator Dr. Claudia Husseneder
will conduct DNA barcoding on key species within indicator families,
which will allow students or researchers with minimal taxonomic training
to easily identify important insects for future coastal studies. The
insect inventory generated by Ben’s research also provides comparative
baseline data that researchers can use to observe how insect communities
change following stress-induced marsh loss or following marsh recovery
resulting from habitat management.
His Learning
Dr. Foil’s multidisciplinary background showed Ben that being
well-read across multiple fields could help him contextualize his
research in the greater picture. He put this concept into practice at
the annual Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science (GoMOSES)
conference, which facilitates interdisciplinary and cross-institutional
collaboration. “The most important aspect of the GoMRI science community
to me is the ability to interact and cooperate with other GoMRI
associated labs,” Ben said. “Following the 2018 GoMOSES conference, I
participated in a Seaside Sparrow workshop with the Taylor and Stouffer
labs from Louisiana State University’s School of Renewable Natural
Resources (see Smithsonian Highlights CWC Research on Seaside Sparrows).
Because they focus on the Seaside Sparrow diet, I am providing a DNA
barcode database of salt marsh insects to compare their samples
against.”
His Future
Ben plans to pursue a Ph.D. and continue his insect and
ecology-related education. He advises students considering a scientific
career to take statistics and scientific writing courses when they are
available, “It’s easy to focus just on the research occurring in your
specific field and overlook the importance of study design and being
able to communicate your results.”
Praise for Ben
Dr. Foil praised Ben’s ability to adapt to challenging work
conditions. He explained that Ben did as the locals do to handle the
brutal heat and harsh conditions (hats, sunscreen, hydration, seeking
shade) during two-day biweekly boat trips to collection sites,
implementing two collection strategies, and sorting thousands of
insects. While baseline animal population data prior to Deepwater Horizon
was severely lacking, Dr. Foil said that Ben and his fellow graduate
students are addressing these gaps using various techniques that mix DNA
sequencing with classic taxonomy. “Saltwater intrusion and fresh water
diversions are inevitable in the changing coastal habitats,” said Dr.
Foil. “Hopefully, Ben will provide valuable data for use in evaluating
these effects on biological communities.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Ben Aker and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Loop podcast takes a deep dive into the Gulf of Mexico with the researchers studying the processes, mechanisms, and impacts of oil spills.
Researchers from the Center for Integrated Modeling and Analysis of Gulf Ecosystems (C-IMAGE) discuss their studies with David Levin of Mind Open Media. C-IMAGE is an international research group studying mud, microbes and mammals after two mega spills, Deepwater Horizon and Ixtoc I. The goal of C-IMAGE is to advance understanding of the fundamental processes and mechanisms of marine blowouts and their consequences, ensuring that society is better-prepared to mitigate future events.
Episode 1: Overview of C-IMAGE C-IMAGE PI Dr. Steven Murawski talks to David Levin about C-IMAGE’s research goals and the importance of integration when tackling large scale impacts. This episode is available in English and Spanish. (Transcript: English, Español)
Español:
Episode 2: The Mud and the Blood
C-IMAGE PIs Steven Murawski and David Hollander talk to David Levin aboard the R/V Weatherbird II in August 2012 about looking for Deepwater Horizon‘s impacts on Gulf of Mexico mud and fish. This episode is available in English and Spanish. (Transcript: English, Español)
Español:
Episode 3: The “Not-So-Visible” Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill on the Gulf of Mexico Three years after the BP oil well disaster, scientists are struggling to understand the effects on the Gulf ecosystem. David Levin reports on the oil’s impact on the tiny creatures that form the base of the food chain. (Transcript: English)
Episode 4: Fitting the Gulf of Mexico Inside a Computer: How to Build an Ecosystem Model
David Levin talks with C-IMAGE members Cameron Ainsworth, Jason Lenes, Michelle Masi, and Brian Smith about building an ecosystem model of the Gulf of Mexico to describe how oil spills impact marine life. (Transcript: English, Español)
Episode 5: The Pressure is On!
David Levin talks with C-IMAGE PI Steven Murawski and scientists from the Technical University of Hamburg at Harburg Michael Schluter and Karen Malone about their ongoing experiments examining oil and gas droplets under high pressure to learn more about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (Transcript: English, Español)
Episode 6: Oil – It’s What’s for Dinner… C-IMAGE scientists want to know more about how oil-eating microorganisms behave in the cold deep ocean to learn more about what happened to the oil from the Deepwater Horizon blowout. High-pressure experiments underway at our high pressure facility at the Hamburg University of Technology focus on how these microbes use oil and what happens to them in the process. Results from these studies may lead to a new way to clean up spills by eliminating its most poisonous ingredients. (Transcript: English, Español)
Episode 7: The Ixtoc Spill – Reflections The Deepwater Horizon oil spill happened just a few years ago, but it might be possible to predict its impact on the Gulf by studying another major spill, one that happened in 1979. “These are two of the largest spills in the world’s history as far as blowouts go, and they were both in the Gulf of Mexico.” Wes Tunnell is a marine biologist who is looking at the aftermath of both spills. It’s almost like he’s looking at the same crime scene, separated by more than three decades. How? Give a listen. Mind Open Media producer David Levin talks to Wes Tunnell and John Farrington about their experiences during the 1979 Ixtoc spill and the applications to new blowouts thirty years late. This episode is available in English and Spanish. (Transcript: English, Español)
Español:
Episode 8: In the Mud in Mexico “We were of the mind that with studying the Deepwater Horizon in the northern Gulf we weren’t getting a full Gulf of Mexico perspective.” Geochemist David Hollander is traveling with an international team of scientists aboard a Mexican research vessel. Over the last few years, his team has studied the effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. But today, they’re looking back at a spill that happened 35 years ago and what they learn on this trip might help them understand the future of the Gulf. Mind Open Media producer David Levin talks to David Hollander, Joel Ortega Ortiz, Isabel Romero, Adriana Gaytán-Caballero, and Travis Washburn about their experiences on the RV Justo Sierra in the southern Gulf of Mexico during the research on the Ixtoc spill. (Transcript: English, Español)
Episode 9: Forensic Oceanography
Listen to learn how scientists reanalyzed remotely sensed data taken in the late 1970s to study the Ixtoc 1 oil spill. Dr. Chuanmin Hu and his graduate student Shaojie Sun use the Landsat and Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) data to develop “treasure maps” of oil from the IXTOC-1 spill to steer field studies. Listen in to find out how they did it. This episode is available in English and Spanish. (Transcript: English, Español)
Español:
Episode 10: The Risks for Fish
What happened to the fish in the days and weeks after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill? With a suite of exposure studies, C-IMAGE researchers are monitoring fish health after oil exposure in order to find out. Dr. Dana Wetzel and Kevan Main of Mote Marine Laboratory give fish a small does of oil through either their food, water, or the sea floor sediments, then analyze how their bodies recover. (Transcript: English, Español)
Episode 11: The Cuban Connection: Spills, Science Diplomacy
C-IMAGE collaborated with researchers from the University of Havana for the first join U.S.-Cuban expedition in over 50 years. (Transcript: English)
Episode 12: MTS TechSurge
When research and industry can communicate effectively when responding to an oil spill, both the environment and oil industry benefit from shared knowledge and new technologies. (Transcript: English)
Episode 13: For a Few Dollars More – Costs and Ecosystem Services after Spills
When oil spills are assessed through an economic viewpoint, both environmental and human impacts must be considered to provide a full picture. (Transcript: English)
Episode 14: Modeling Arctic Oil Spills
Understanding the long-term effects of arctic spills like this one could be even more urgent now than ever, as oil exploration makes its way to the North Slope of Alaska (including inside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). C-IMAGE has developed a computer model of the entire Gulf ecosystem, so they could test how future spills would affect the region. And now, they’re applying those tools farther north. (Transcript: English)
Episode 15: Asphalt Ecosystems
At the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, some truly bizarre ecosystems are hiding in the darkness among the asphalt volcanoes and supporting huge colonies of unique life. C-IMAGE has been analyzing these ecosystems and reveals that if chemosynthetic communities are harmed, it could affect other environments as well. The microbes that power those communities don’t just eat chemicals in oil or asphalt—they also eat up a lot of free-floating carbon that would otherwise escape to the rest of the ocean… and eventually, get into the atmosphere, adding to global climate change. (Transcript: English)
Episode 16: Panel Discussion
For the past several years, The Loop covered the work of scientists studying the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The research is winding down and this is The Loop‘s last podcast with C-IMAGE! (Transcript: English)
When an oil slick is exposed to sunlight, photo-oxidation processes
break the oil down and incorporate oxygen into the petroleum molecules.
When the incorporated oxygen reaches a certain amount, the petroleum can
dissolve in water and potentially affect marine organisms and
ecosystems. Sydney Niles
is investigating how photo-oxidation alters the oil’s molecular
composition and if that process forms toxic water-soluble oil compounds
that may affect environmental and public health. Her research may help
the response community better understand oil’s molecular-level effects
on ecosystems and communities and inform future clean-up and restoration
efforts.
As a child, Sydney was curious about how things work and enjoyed
finding the answers in her science classes. She discovered a love for
chemistry in high school, when she learned that chemical reactions can
explain the molecular-level activities behind phenomena such as color
changes in oxidized metals. As an undergraduate chemistry major at the
University of Michigan, she gained lab experience while working on a
Parkinson’s study and later in an environmental research lab focusing on
analytical chemistry. She was amazed that scientists could use electron
microscopes and analytical techniques to clearly observe micron-size
aerosol particles and determine which elements were present. The
experience sparked her desire to use analytical chemistry to benefit the
environment and public health.
Sydney joined Dr. Alan Marshall’s
research group at Florida State University as a graduate student hoping
to work with the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory’s mass
spectrometers (instruments that can measure the mass of individual
compounds). She began working more closely with Dr. Ryan Rodgers after deciding to focus her research on petroleum applications.
“Growing up in Michigan, I loved being in nature and taking summer
trips to the Great Lakes, where we have beautiful beaches and clean,
clear water. I couldn’t imagine an event like Deepwater Horizon
happening to the ecosystems I enjoyed back home,” said Sydney. “I was
initially wary about working with petroleum, as I have always been
passionate about wildlife and taking care of the planet. However, I
realized Dr. Rodger’s group was also focused on environmental
applications involving petroleum, and I became passionate about using
the tools at my disposal to contribute to GoMRI’s research goals.”
Her Work
Sydney mimics in situ oil photo-oxidation in the lab using a
solar simulator and oil collected directly from the Macondo well during
spill response. She analyzes the oil before and after irradiation using
Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR
MS). This process describes oil samples on a molecular level and allows
her to compare oil compounds present before and after sunlight exposure.
Since molecular composition is closely tied to oil’s tendency to
aggregate and form emulsions and deposits, identifying the compounds
present after irradiation can help determine how petroleum will behave
in the environment. She conducts similar analyses on oil sheens and tar
balls collected from oiled beaches and compares them to lab-irradiated
samples. She found that lab-irradiated samples strongly resemble those
collected from oiled beaches but do not resemble lab-generated samples
created using biodegradation. This suggests that sunlight created
oxygenated compounds identified in field samples rather than processes
associated with oil-degrading bacteria.
So far, Sydney has observed that photo-oxidation forms oxygenated
oil- and water-soluble compounds that are not present in the samples
prior to irradiation. Some of the oil-soluble compounds act like
surfactants that cause oil slicks to swell with seawater and form
strong, mousse-like emulsions. The emulsions’ oil- and water-soluble
components are difficult to separate, which can impede clean-up efforts.
“Typically, the densities of oil and water are different enough that
you can easily scoop up an oil layer without disrupting the water
layer,” she explained. “Separating the oil and water is much more
difficult if an emulsion has formed (imagine shaking up oil and vinegar
dressing and then trying to isolate the two layers). These mousses can
be several feet thick, and the incorporation of water makes them heavier
and increases the volume of material that needs to be cleaned up.”
While both oil- and water-soluble compounds contain potentially toxic
hydrocarbons, water-soluble compounds are of specific interest to
Sydney’s research because they travel more freely throughout marine
ecosystems.
Sydney will test the toxicity of water-soluble compounds formed
through the irradiation process using microtox bioassays, adding
bioluminescent bacteria to a water sample containing the irradiated
compounds and measuring luminescence at given time points. Luminescence
will decrease when bacteria are killed by toxic compounds, allowing her
to correlate luminescence with toxicity in the sample. “Petroleum
hydrocarbons have known toxicity, and we are curious to see if they are
released into the environment as water-soluble compounds after
photo-oxidation,” she explained. “Understanding how different weathering
processes contribute to the oil’s chemical and physical changes in the
environment is the best way to plan better clean-up strategies for
future spills.”
Her Learning
Sydney’s experiences conducting GoMRI research often reminded her of
why she came to love chemistry. She recalled an experiment that placed
dark brown oil into a solar simulator for several days, transforming it
into a light brown fluffy emulsion with a peanut butter consistency. She
viewed the samples in the FT-ICR and saw dramatic changes in the oil
molecules after photo-oxidation. “These results were just as fascinating
to me as my high school chemistry class, where a reaction represents
how molecules change and a physical change is also observed,” she said.
Her Future
Sydney hopes to continue researching petroleum and the environment
with an industry or at a national lab. She suggests that students
considering a scientific career should participate in undergraduate
research before pursuing graduate school, “Research is very different
than classes, so make sure you like doing research before applying to
graduate school.” She explains that finding a research project that
sparks true passion in you is the best motivator for a science student.
“If you are doing something you feel is important for society or the
environment, you will be much more motivated in the lab,” she said. “Dr.
Rodgers is very passionate about how our research can impact human
health, animal health, and the environment, which helped me to see the
bigger picture every step of the way.”
Praise for Sydney
Dr. Marshall recalled that Sydney immersed herself in the research
from the moment she arrived at Florida State University. He describes
her as a multi-tasker who often works on several projects at once,
including mastering the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory’s
custom-built FT-ICR MS. Her research has led to 14 poster and oral
presentations at major scientific conferences, and her Ph.D.
dissertation promises to yield multiple journal articles. “Her first
paper, soon to appear in Environmental Science & Technology,
provides definitive evidence that ketones and aldehydes generated in
weathered petroleum essentially derive completely from photo-oxidation,
not biodegradation,” he said.
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Sydney Niles and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Many factors affect how the ocean moves, and it is especially
difficult to know exactly how it will behave in a specific area, as was
evident with challenges in predicting oil transport during Deepwater Horizon.
The Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal published an article that describes
tools scientists use to track currents on and just beneath the ocean’s
surface, such as drifters, autonomous underwater vehicles, planes, and
video equipment attached to ship-tethered balloons and drones.
The GoMRI is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board
makes the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the
intellectual quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the
GoMRI research. All research data, findings and publications will be
made publicly available. The program was established through a $500
million financial commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Adventures of Zack and Molly is a four-part animated short video series that tells the story of a young man, Zack, who is more interested in the small world of his smartphone than the larger world around him. Zack’s online request for a roommate is answered by Molly, a tech-savvy Dumbo Octopus on a mission to tell the world about the importance of the deep ocean. Molly wants to use Zack’s apartment for her global communications headquarters, but Zack is skeptical. To win Zack over, Molly takes him to her deep ocean home in the Gulf of Mexico to see its unique features and diverse marine life and help him understand how human activities threaten its health. In episode 4 (added in March 2020), the duo takes a field trip to the deep sea ecosystems in the Gulf of California to see some amazing underwater features and meet an underappreciated superhero.
These educational videos are intended for adults and children ages 10-18 and are accompanied by a Learning Guide providing discussion points, connections to Next Generation Science Standards, hands-on activities, and further resources.
Our knowledge about ocean transport comes primarily from ocean
circulation models that use field observations and theoretical motion
equations to simulate ocean dynamics. Ocean models can depict
large-scale circulation features accurately, but resolutions high enough
to capture all scales of motion entail significant computational time
and cost and are challenging or even impossible for most modern
supercomputers.
Matt Grossi
is developing an alternative approach that uses an artificial neural
network algorithm, a type of artificial intelligence, to predict ocean
transport based on information it automatically learns from field
observations. This type of machine learning is considerably less
computationally expensive than conventional circulation models, and Matt
believes the network’s ability to digest data for skilled ocean
forecasts will have many real-world applications, such as predicting oil
dispersion in specific locations.
Matt credits his physical oceanography path to an eighth-grade field
trip to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where his class spent four days
learning about the Cape’s geology, fauna, flora, and maritime history. A
trip activity asked students to measure the speed and direction of the
Cape Cod Canal surface current using a tape measure, a stopwatch, and
oranges. “We hadn’t grown up near the ocean, so we had no idea that the
relentless spring wind ripping through the canal could make the water
appear to flow in the opposite direction of the strong tidal current,”
said Matt. “Imagine how surprised we were when we tossed our oranges
into the water, waited for them to float past our stopwatch, and
observed them floating in the ‘wrong’ direction!”
The experience inspired Matt to pursue an undergraduate degree in
physical oceanography and meteorology at the Florida Institute of
Technology and then a master’s degree at the University of Delaware’s
Ocean Exploration, Remote Sensing, and Biogeography lab. The Deepwater Horizon
oil spill occurred while he was finishing his master’s thesis, and his
lab provided targeted regional satellite products and glider resources
to aid response efforts. He recalls his advisor uploading the latest
satellite imagery into their models and remarking that recovery from the
spill would take years – he was right. Roughly a decade later, Matt is
continuing his education studying the same disaster.
After his master’s research, Matt operated regional ocean observation
systems at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s School for
Marine Science and Technology. Hoping to return to data exploration and
research, Matt learned about Dr. Tamay Özgökmen’s
GoMRI-funded ocean transport research during a recruitment visit to the
University of Miami. Özgökmen described the unprecedented ocean
circulation data his team had collected that was waiting to be analyzed,
and Matt was excited about the broad research possibilities and the
opportunity to help conduct a month-long drifter campaign in the Gulf of
Mexico. He joined Özgökmen’s lab as a meteorology and physical
oceanography Ph.D. student. “I am excited to engage in cutting-edge
research,” said Matt. “There is a growing appreciation for the
importance of the world’s ocean in understanding many of the 21st Century’s greatest environmental challenges.”
His Work
Matt is exploring how an artificial neural network (ANN) can improve
predictions of ocean transport using information it learns from
observational data. Rather than depending on a preexisting machine
learning package, he and his colleagues are designing their own network.
Unlike ocean circulation models, which use field observations to
establish initial conditions and then apply theoretical algorithms to
predict what should happen, their network will digest and learn from data depicting what actually happens to buoyant ocean particles.
“Instead of forcing selected data into a theoretical ocean model, why
not use as much field data as possible and learn what we can from it?
Data-driven modeling techniques such as ANNs provide promising ways to
do just that,” said Matt. “ANNs look for statistical relationships
between different data sets – the more data available, the more the
neural network can learn. Once trained, the network can make skilled
predictions about cases not seen during training.”
The ANN’s success is dependent on (1) the data’s degree of
predictability and (2) the amount of data available. Matt is currently
addressing the first criteria through a proof-of-concept study assessing
what information the ANN can learn about particle trajectories. He
advects simulated particles in various known flow regimes, tracks their
trajectories, and trains the ANN to predict where the particles will end
up. So far, the group’s ANN has learned to use a particle’s previous
trajectory to predict its final destination. “Our ANN’s predictions have
struggled in more complicated scenarios, such as interacting scales of
motion, but our model is the simplest kind of neural network and there
is plenty of room for fine-tuning,” he said. “The preliminary results
from these test domains have been optimistically promising, and we are
now beginning similar tests using realistic oceanic flows produced by an
ocean circulation model.”
Matt’s next research step will address the second criteria concerning
the amount of data available to train the ANN. While global
observational ocean data are sparse, he hopes that regional observation
systems and targeted field experiments will provide enough information
to begin assessing machine learning’s applications for oceanography.
CARTHE’s Gulf of Mexico field expeditions (the Grand Lagrangian Deployment or GLAD, the Surfzone Coastal Oil Pathways Experiment or SCOPE, the Submesoscale Processes and Lagrangian Analysis on the Shelf or SPLASH experiment, and the Lagrangian Submesoscale Experiment or LASER)
represent the largest coordinated field campaigns to-date that assess
interactions between mesoscale and submesoscale ocean dynamics. Matt
plans to use the campaigns’ unprecedented quantities of data to assess
how much oceanographic data the ANN requires to produce an accurate
simulation.
While it is too early to say exactly how ocean forecasting will
implement machine learning algorithms, Matt envisions a more complete
picture of ocean dynamics using a network of ANNs trained for different
regions and seasons. “It may sound complicated, but this is the essence
of artificial intelligence: multiple machine learning algorithms working
on different parts of a complex problem to achieve a common goal,” said
Matt. “It’s just like people: a trained individual can only accomplish
so much, but a team of trained individuals working together is always
more productive.”
His Learning
Matt said that working with Dr. Özgökmen taught him to think like a
scientist and collaborate on a large research team involving multiple
institutions. He was particularly grateful for his experiences working
on the 2017 SPLASH experiment. “Being part of an international team of
scientists working together to conduct one of the largest coordinated
field campaigns to date is undoubtedly a highlight of my career,” he
said. “Without the support of GoMRI, none of this would have been
possible.”
His Future
Matt hopes to enter a post-doc position that will help prepare him
for a research career in government, academia, or the private sector. He
encourages students considering a scientific career to take advantage
of any available opportunities, even if the focus isn’t related to one’s
current research. He explained that opportunities to get involved are
almost always available if you reach out and ask, even if they aren’t
explicitly advertised. “You never know what will come of it,” said Matt.
“My career started with throwing some oranges into the water in eighth
grade. Many years later, I’m still throwing things into the water in the
name of science, only now they’re bigger, more expensive, and have GPS
tracking devices on them. I still don’t know where they’re going to go
once we toss them in, but that’s what keeps things exciting – and keeps
researchers employed!”
Praise for Matt
Dr. Özgökmen recruited Matt as a Ph.D. student because of his
experience collecting and organizing observational data. He explained
that he and Matt began considering machine learning algorithms for
processing oceanic data around the same time. Matt immediately took some
machine learning courses and began developing codes for processing
CARTHE data, which Özgökmen expects will be instrumental to their
project. Matt’s work will also help their team’s recently awarded
Department of Defense Multi University Research Initiative project (with
colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of
California Los Angeles, Florida State University, and Duke University)
centered on using machine learning for ocean submesoscale flows.
“Submesoscale flows and machine learning for ocean data are concepts
that did not really exist until the 21st Century,” said
Özgökmen. “Matt is making great progress and is likely to advance
oceanography in quite an exciting and different direction than usual. I
hope that a lucrative career is awaiting him in the future.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Matt Grossi and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the CARTHE website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
There are currently over 30 active deep-sea drilling platforms and
more than 600 areas where oil naturally seeps from the Gulf of Mexico
seafloor. A massive microbial response coincided with the Deepwater Horizon subsurface oil plume, leading researchers to question how pressure may have impacted the hydrocarbon degraders. Kelli Mullane
is investigating how high-pressure and low-temperature affect
oil-degrading microbes’ ability to detect and move toward hydrocarbon
compounds. Her research will help inform how scientists and responders
apply bioremediation rates to models of deep-sea hydrocarbon fate and
transport.
Kelli grew up dreaming of becoming a marine biologist but struggled
to decide which direction to take. As an environmental science
undergraduate student at Rutgers University, she gained hands-on
experience working in a marine biology lab studying African cichlid
fish. She had just left this lab group when she was invited to complete a
George H. Cook Scholar Honors Thesis, which required her to participate
in ongoing lab research.
“A program director told me to search the Marine Biology department’s
website for anything I thought was interesting, and I came across Dr.
Costantinto Vetriani’s Deep-Sea Microbiology lab studying extremophiles
(organisms that thrive in extreme conditions) at deep-sea hydrothermal
vents,” said Kelli. “My microbiology knowledge was limited, but Dr.
Vetriani took a chance on me and today I’m working as a Ph.D. student in
a microbiology lab at one of the world’s leading oceanographic
institutions.”
Kelli wanted to continue studying extremophiles in graduate school and discovered Dr. Douglas Bartlett’s
high-pressure microbiology lab at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography. Their GoMRI-funded research investigates how the high
pressure at the Deepwater Horizon site affected the movement of
oil-degrading microbes. She was intrigued about using molecular and
physiological approaches to answer questions about high-pressure
environments.
“Imagine 200 elephants standing on the tip of your thumb. That’s how
much pressure these deep-sea microbes experience, yet they are able to
grow, divide, and interact. That’s when my curiosity kicked in!” said
Kelli. “The idea that something so small survives and excels under
extreme environmental conditions that would easily kill a human is
mind-boggling to me.”
Her Work
Kelli investigates how high hydrostatic pressure and low temperature
influence the motility (independent movement) and chemotaxis (movement
towards or away from something) of deep-sea hydrocarbon-degrading
microbes. She and her colleagues work with pressure-tolerant microbial
strains isolated from the Gulf following Deepwater Horizon. Her
findings will help explain how pressure influences microbial
bioremediation rates and inform deep-sea hydrocarbon fate and transport
models.
“It’s not surprising that the microbes that responded to Deepwater Horizon are pressure-tolerant rather than piezophillic (pressure-loving),” she said. “DeepwaterHorizon pressures
were approximately 10 – 15 MPa, which is relatively quite low
considering the high pressures our lab studies. There are natural oil
seeps at much deeper depths than DeepwaterHorizon,
and the potential for a future anthropogenic oil spill in much deeper
waters is definitely there. We wanted our research to look at DeepwaterHorizon-relevant pressures as well as pressures present at greater depths.”
Kelli’s first experiment examined how high pressure and low temperature affect microbe motility. She worked with Kyoto University’s Dr. Masayoshi Nishiyama, who developed a small high-pressure microscopy chamber with glass windows. Kelli exposed microbes in the chamber to pressures equaling or greater than Deepwater Horizon conditions and low temperature (7°C) and recorded their movement using a high-resolution microscope. She analyzed the collected video for quantitative changes in the number and speed of swimming bacteria and observed that both factors significantly decreased microbe motility, though temperature had a greater impact on motility than pressure.
Kelli’s chemotaxis experiments will assess if in situ
pressure levels inhibit microbes’ movement towards hydrocarbons
(decreasing their ability to degrade hydrocarbons efficiently) or
enhance it (making deep-sea biodegradation more efficient). “Researchers
have investigated differences in chemotaxis-related gene expression at
atmospheric and high pressure, but nobody has directly measured
increased or decreased chemotaxis activity under high-pressure
conditions,” she said. Kelli is developing a method to adapt previous
chemotaxis studies for high-pressure research. She also plans to use
transposon mutagenesis to obtain motility and chemotaxis mutants, which
may help her identify genes and gene clusters important for
high-pressure motility and chemotaxis.
Her Learning
Working in Dr. Bartlett’s lab, Kelli has learned that researchers
need to wear many hats. Her roles included mentoring seven undergraduate
students, conceptualizing her own projects and fellowship applications,
troubleshooting new protocols, and making sure the lab is well-stocked.
“There is a lot that falls on my shoulders as the only Ph.D. student in
the lab,” she said. “While it’s been a ton of work, it’s also made me
the scientist I am today, and I wouldn’t trade that experience for
anything.”
Kelli realized the value of the GoMRI science community during the
2018 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science (GoMOSES)
conference, her first time connecting with researchers from many fields.
“Getting a full sense of the community that gathered to study this oil
spill was really exciting for me,” she said. “I was overjoyed to return
to GoMOSES in 2019 and share the progress I’d made over the last year.”
Kelli’s oral presentation at the 2019 GoMOSES conference was awarded a
James D. Watkins Student Award for Excellence in Research.
Kelli believes that STEM outreach and science communication are
extremely important to a scientist’s success. She currently acts as the
volunteer coordinator for the Scripps Community Outreach for Public Education (SCOPE)
program. The program offers free campus tours to foster scientific
curiosity and environmental stewardship, provides STEM education
opportunities to youth and the public, and helps graduate students
improve their scientific communication and outreach skills. Kelli is
also the lead coordinator for the Scripps Student Symposium (S3),
a one-day conference that allows graduate students from diverse
scientific backgrounds to present and discuss their research and engage
in interdisciplinary collaboration.
Her Future
Kelli hopes to find a post-doc position that balances teaching and
lab work so she can expand her skills and develop her long-term goals.
She emphasizes to younger students that it’s okay to not know exactly
what interests you, “Try something, jump in, and get your feet wet. If
you realize along the way that that particular research field isn’t for
you – that’s okay! Move on to a new opportunity until you find where
your passion lies.”
Praise for Kelli
Dr. Bartlett said Kelli has tremendous organizational and leadership
skills, including those associated with lab operations and mentoring
undergraduate students. He described her as a gifted communicator able
to relay her science to other researchers and to the public. “Kelli’s
work performing high-pressure microscopic analyses of the motility
behavior of oil-degrading Gulf of Mexico bacteria has provided an
important new perspective on the factors that influence oil degradation
in the deep sea.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Kelli Mullane and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal published an article that describes how scientists are using the In Situ
Ichthyoplankton Imaging System (ISIIS) to photograph zooplankton
organisms and gather information about salinity, temperature, dissolved
oxygen, and light levels. The detailed imagery that the ISIIS collects
is helping researchers understand how incidents such as Deepwater Horizon
may affect the microscopic organisms that live in the Gulf of Mexico’s
dynamic coastal waters, where biomass and plankton are highly
concentrated.
Read the article What the Big Picture Can Teach Us About Tiny Ocean Creatures featuring scientists Adam Greer and Luciano Chiaverano
(University of Southern Mississippi Department of Marine Resources and
the Consortium for Oil Spill Exposure Pathways in Coastal
River-Dominated Ecosystems or CONCORDE).
They describe how biologic data is combined with physical oceanographic
modeling to track zooplankton, make links to important fish species and
coastal processes, and improve understanding of the shelf ecosystem.
The GoMRI is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board
makes the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the
intellectual quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the
GoMRI research. All research data, findings and publications will be
made publicly available. The program was established through a $500
million financial commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team released a product that concisely summarizes recent science regarding how dispersants work, how they are used, and how they affect sea life. The fact sheet also includes information on existing policies for chemical dispersants and how dispersants were used during Deepwater Horizon.
Read Frequently Asked Questions: Dispersant Edition
and learn about dispersant-related research and how scientists are
investigating how laboratory-based results relate to the ever-changing
conditions in nature.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team synthesizes
peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general audiences,
particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast. Sea Grant
offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently-held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
************
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Following Deepwater Horizon, researchers have been conducting multi-year studies on the health of Gulf of Mexico marine life. As part of this effort, Lindsay Jasperse
recently studied how marsh fish respond to combined oil exposure and
environmental stressors and is currently investigating the immune
systems of oil-exposed bottlenose dolphins.
Lindsay grew up in New Jersey, where she spent her summers at the
beach and developed an interest in marine research. She was an
undergraduate student at the University of Connecticut when she
discovered her love for lab work. Most science classes for her Molecular
and Cell Biology major and Physiology and Neurobiology minor included a
lab component, and she loved applying classroom lessons to hands-on
experiments.
As part of her undergraduate Honors Thesis requirements, Lindsay joined Dr. Sylvain De Guise’s
lab team, who was funded through the Morris Animal Foundation, to
investigate how eastern oysters respond to oil and Corexit exposure. She
loved the research and continued with De Guise’s lab team as a
pathobiology Ph.D. student on their GoMRI-funded sheepshead minnow and
dolphin research project.
Her Work
Lindsay’s research spans two GoMRI-funded research efforts. Her dissertation research was with the project The Combined Effect of Environmental and Anthropogenic Stressors on Fish Health,
which investigated effects on sheepshead minnow reproduction and
development. “While fish can adapt to variable estuary conditions, it is
not well understood how fish respond to the additional stress of oil
exposure,” she explained. “Moreover, environmental conditions such as
dissolved oxygen levels and salinity can have a major influence on the
uptake and outcome of contaminants in fish.”
Lindsay and her colleagues conducted experiments with sheepshead
minnows using high-energy water accommodated fraction or HEWAF under
different environmental stressors, including hypoxia and low salinity.
They counted eggs produced and fertilized to monitor reproductive
success and analyzed eggs for heart rate, length, and survival. They
observed that hypoxia and low salinity intensified HEWAF effects on
minnow reproduction, perhaps contributing to developmental problems in
their offspring. Two generations of minnows showed impaired ability to
capture prey, suggesting possible transgenerational effects on this
species. “These data indicate that environmental stressors need to be
considered in oil spill risk assessments,” said Lindsay. “We hope that
the data from my dissertation can inform remediation efforts following a
future oil spill.”
While completing her dissertation, Lindsay became involved with
CARMMHA’s investigation on bottlenose dolphin health. Dr. De Guise’s
team previously observed that oil-exposed dolphins exhibited immune
system impairment, including abnormal proliferation of T lymphocytes (T
cells) and a cytokine shift towards a T helper 2 (Th2 cells), which
could alter the dolphin’s infection resistance and increase its
susceptibility to diseases. “T cells are responsible for cell-mediated
immunity,” explained Lindsay. “T helper 1 (Th1) cells stimulate
cell-mediated immunity to help combat intracellular pathogens, Th2 cells
stimulate antibody-mediated immunity to help combat extracellular
pathogens, and regulatory T cells (Treg) dampen the immune response and
are critical for immune tolerance.”
Dr. De Guise’s team is now developing techniques to determine the
pathways involved in immune system alterations. Using blood samples
collected from a reference dolphin population, Lindsay’s team validated
novel methods that identify and quantify Treg cells. The team also
demonstrated how specific cell-signaling proteins called cytokines can
help researchers better understand how T cell subsets function,
including how they stimulate dolphin T cells and induce increased Th1
and Treg gene expression. They are using these new tools to determine
subtle differences in immune system functioning in oil-exposed and
reference dolphins. Lindsay and her colleagues are investigating if in vitro T cell exposure to oil alters T cell proliferation or subset function and using an in vivo mouse model to assess immune system impairment and the potential relationship between Tregs and reproductive failure.
“All of these methods allow us to determine the specific pathways
being affected by oil exposure,” explained Lindsay. “This can help us
predict what health effects the dolphins are likely to have after oil
exposure and how likely (or not) they are to recover.”
Her Learning
Lindsay’s work with Dr. De Guise taught her diverse immunology and
toxicology assessment techniques and showed her the value of
collaborative science. Their team’s projects are highly collaborative,
involving institutions from across the country and overseas. “I’ve seen
first-hand how much more can be accomplished when labs work together
towards a common goal,” she said.
Lindsay gained valuable experience presenting her research at
scientific meetings, helping her become a more effective and confident
communicator. She received a James D. Watkins Student Award for
Excellence in Research at the 2019 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and
Ecosystem Science Conference. Lindsay described a particularly memorable
experience when a large ice storm passed through Mobile, Alabama,
during the 2014 conference, “Being from the Northeast, I’m used to snow
and ice, but I have never seen anything like that before! The entire
city was covered in a sheet of ice.”
Her Future
Lindsay will defend her thesis in May 2019 and then hopefully obtain a
post-doc or other research-oriented position. She said that students
considering a science career should practice their written and oral
communication skills, because effectively communicating one’s research
is an important component of the scientific process.
Praise for Lindsay
Dr. De Guise said Lindsay’s exceptional progress as a scientist was
rewarding to observe, but not surprising. Even as an undergraduate
volunteer, she impressed De Guise and his fellow researchers. “A
colleague told me ‘you better keep her!’ She was that much more focused,
eager, and fast learning than most undergrads coming through the lab,”
he said. He praised Lindsay’s ability to balance working independently
with working as a team and keeping focused on the project’s goals. He
described her as quick to volunteer and assist others, while managing
her own experiments and deadlines with ease. “Lindsay is certainly an
exceptionally talented and driven young scientist, with a promising
career in front of her,” said De Guise.
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Lindsay Jasperse and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the CARMMHA website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Petroleum hydrocarbons buried in sandy beaches are protected from
tides and UV light and, thus, may persist longer in the environment than
oil on the beach surface. As a graduate student, Ioana Bociu’s research focused on determining the degradation rates for large sediment-oil clusters buried in Florida beaches following Deepwater Horizon.
Her findings will help inform environmental managers about the
persistence of buried oil in the environment, which could affect
recovery after an oil spill.
Growing up in Romania and then the United States, Ioana was curious
about and interested in nature and conservation. She began her
undergraduate studies at Florida State University with a double-major in
International Affairs and Japanese, but felt drawn to environmental
issues. She switched her major to Environmental Science and began taking
environmental science, geology, and oceanography classes. Her first
class with Dr. Jeffrey Chanton got her interested in the carbon cycle and the need for filling gaps in ocean science research. Later on, a class with Dr. Ian MacDonald introduced her to oil biogeochemistry and Ph.D. candidate Brian Wells.
She told Wells she wanted to do volunteer laboratory work, and he
invited her to assist with his research investigating oil biodegradation
in the Gulf of Mexico under Dr. Markus Huettel.
After completing her undergraduate degrees, Ioana conducted field
work at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute for two years,
which solidified her passion for carbon cycle research and sparked her
desire to pursue graduate school. “When I had the chance of returning to
Dr. Huettel’s lab, I was very enthusiastic to begin the GoMRI project
as a master’s student,” she said. “I enjoy doing environmental research
and learning about natural processes and mechanisms. My drive comes from
wanting to understand what is happening in the environment after a
long-term disturbance like the Deepwater Horizon oil blowout.”
Her Work
Shortly after the oil spill, the Huettel team conducted an experiment
using 100 round metal tea infusers filled with homogenized, weathered
oil-sand mixtures (agglomerates) collected from Florida beaches. They
buried the agglomerates in Florida beaches in sets of ten in sand at
10-50 cm depth at 10-cm intervals, retrieved the agglomerates at
pre-determined intervals over 3 years, and then froze the samples until
analysis.
Ioana’s team analyzed the agglomerates for weight loss and change in
diameter, which could indicate microbial biodegradation of the oil. A
noticeable change in the agglomerates’ color over time prompted Ioana
and her team to conduct a color and fluorescence analysis. They applied
an elemental analyzer coupled to an isotope ratio mass spectrometer to
evaluate temporal changes in carbon content and carbon type (stable
isotopes) in the agglomerates. Using a gas chromatograph coupled to a
gas mass spectrometer, the team assessed temporal changes in the
samples’ petroleum hydrocarbon compositions. Because environmental
samples can contain thousands of compounds, Ioana and her team focused
only on hydrocarbons considered harmful to humans by the Environmental
Protection Agency and the International Agency of Research on Cancer. In
total, her team evaluated 30 saturated hydrocarbons and 33 polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).
Based on these analyses, Ioana estimated that the golf-ball-sized
aggregates buried in beach sands would degrade within 3 decades. She
further observed that the half-lives (the time required for a quantity
to reduce to half its initial value) of saturated hydrocarbons varied
between 100 – 568 days and correlated to carbon chain length, with
longer (heavier) carbon chains degrading more slowly than shorter carbon
chains. The half-lives of PAHs varied between 94 – 836 days, depending
on the compound. In comparison, reference agglomerates kept in the dark
for approximately 7.4 years without sediment exposure degraded
three-times more slowly than agglomerates buried in situ.
“The most critical part of our study is understanding the rate of
degradation of buried oiled material, as most studies address oil
degradation only in surface sediments. Buried material can persist for
longer periods,” explained Ioana. “The more we can learn about what is
going on in the environment, the better prepared we can be in the
future. A significant part of my motivation comes from wanting to help
resolve future issues by providing useful information to the greater
public.”
Her Learning
Working in Huettel’s lab had a significant impact on Ioana’s growth
as a scientist. Analyzing sediment-oil agglomerates involved a
sophisticated extraction and measuring process that required a team
effort to complete. This teamwork taught Ioana how to effectively
interact with other researchers. She also gained leadership experience
while teaching undergraduate students involved with the oil extraction
process about the procedures and problem-solving techniques. Ioana’s
conversations with Dr. Huettel had a great impact on her growth as a
researcher, “Dr. Huettel was very patient with me, as there were quite a
few times I walked into his office with a nervous laugh, struggling
with something. I realized that verbalizing what I was thinking helped a
lot in solving the issues I had. From brief conversations with him, I
was able to proceed with the task at hand.”
Presenting her research at the 2018 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and
Ecosystem Science conference was an especially memorable experience for
Ioana. Although she initially felt intimidated by the many experienced
researchers present, she found that the conference community was
extremely supportive and provided helpful feedback, leaving her feeling
revitalized and ready to tackle the next steps of her master’s work.
Her Future
Ioana completed her master’s degree in spring 2018 and is searching
for a government agency position conducting research on coastal or
carbon cycle topics, broadening her experience and becoming a
well-rounded scientist. She said that science students should consider
the direction they want to go and the sacrifices they are willing to
make at every step of their career. “There will be monotonous days when
you have to redo samples or go through large batches of data, but in my
opinion the reward of having data that can tell us something we didn’t
know about Earth really pays off,” said Ioana. “As with everything in
life, there are pros and cons – you just have to learn to find happiness
in your choices.”
Praise for Ioana
Dr. Huettel praised Ioana’s enthusiasm and motivation, stating that
her attitude had an immediate and positive affect on everyone in his
lab. He said that Ioana optimized the hydrocarbon extraction line beyond
factory-specified efficiency and became the lab’s expert in running the
GC-MS. He explained that she kept a cool head throughout the group’s
research and impressed him with her ability to evaluate the complex data
sets produced by the GC-MS, despite frequent software crashes. “I guess
she could eliminate any research frustration as she honed her aerialist
skills while practicing and performing,” he joked.
Huettel noted that when the lab brought on undergraduate students,
Ioana became their dedicated supervisor. “It was great to see how, even
at this early stage of her career, she managed her own lab group, making
sure that high-quality standards were maintained, work was completed on
time, and that everybody always stayed well-hydrated,” he said. “She is
a born leader, fun to work with, and a role model for her peers.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Ioana Bociu and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Outreach coordinators from Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) consortia partnered to produce a special issue of Current: The Journal of Marine Education, published by the National Marine Educators Association (NMEA). The GoMRI-sponsored special issue – titled “Special Issue Featuring the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative: Research Resulting from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill” – features synthesis articles on oil spill science and educational resources that educators can use to incorporate oil spill science into their curriculums. The goal of the issue is to convey the scientific process using the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and GoMRI as an example.
A Current Log (forward) from GoMRI Research Board Chair Dr. Rita Colwell
An introduction highlighting the issue’s goals
Descriptions of each of the GoMRI-funded consortia + links to external communications partners
Five main articles discussing: (1) where oil went after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; (2) the story of marine oil snow; (3) the spill’s impacts on organisms and habitats; (4) technological advancements resulting from the spill and the GoMRI investment; and (5) a feature on data sharing, data transparency, and the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative (GRIIDC).
Lesson plans, classroom activities, and other educational resources related to the research discussed
Jessie Kastler (Consortium for Oil Spill Exposure Pathways in Coastal River-Dominated Ecosystems, CONCORDE), Katie Fillingham (GoMRI Management Team), Sara Beresford (Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf consortium, ECOGIG), and Teresa Greely (Center for the Integrated Modeling and Analysis of the Gulf Ecosystem, C-IMAGE) served as co-editors and co-authors for the special issue.
Laura Bracken (Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment, CARTHE), Murt Conover (Coastal Waters Consortium, CWC), Emily Davenport (ECOGIG), Dan DiNicola (formerly Relationships of Effects of Cardiac Outcomes in Fish for Validation of Ecological Risk consortium, RECOVER), Sandra Ellis (GRIIDC) and Rachel McDonald (Alabama Center for Ecological Resilience, ACER) also served as co-authors.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research. All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly available. The program was established through a $500 million financial commitment from BP. For more information, visit http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Many ocean forecast models treat the upper 1 meter of the water
column, which plays a central role in ocean material transport, as a
single layer. However, recent research shows that currents act
differently at various depths within this meter.
The use of ocean drifters is the oldest way to measure currents, and recent design advances are providing more detailed and accurate ocean current data than ever. John Lodise
analyzes data from these improved drifters to observe near-surface
currents at multiple depths and explores how wind-driven velocities
influence them. “If we know exactly how the wind is going to affect
surface currents, then we can analyze forecasted wind and wave
conditions to better predict the movement of surface currents and the
pollution being transported by them,” he said.
John grew up on Long Island, New York where the ocean was part of his
life through fishing, beach trips, and surfing. John, as an
undergraduate at the University of Delaware, explored scientific fields
related to ocean science and ultimately chose physical oceanography.
“Being able to understand the movement and circulation of the ocean is
so important to solving many of today’s environmental issues,” he said.
“I thought physical oceanography was an avenue where I could really make
a contribution to the current scientific understanding.” He graduated
in 2015 with a Bachelor’s degree in environmental science and
concentrations in atmospheric science and physical oceanography.
While researching potential graduate programs, John was immediately
impressed and motivated by the CARTHE research taking place at the
University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric
Science. He applied to the program and accepted a position in Dr. Tamay Özgökmen’s ocean sciences lab, where researchers are conducting studies on ocean transport of floating material such as Deepwater Horizon
oil. “I’ve always felt a connection to the ocean, and with that comes
an obligation to try and protect it and all the resources it provides,”
said John. “What’s most important for me is being part of a community
that’s actively working towards protecting oceans, beaches, the
ecosystems that exist there, and oceanic resources that humans depend
on.”
His Work
John deconstructs surface currents using data from drifters deployed during the Lagrangian Submesoscale Experiment (LASER),
which used a fully-coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean model to calculate the
physical variables involved in currents. John first applies the
Lagrangian Variational Analysis (LAVA) tool to estimate velocity fields
in the study region when wind and wave action is minimal. Doing so
allows him to capture the underlying circulation patterns not driven by
wind and waves. He then analyzes how drifter velocity changes when wind
and wave activity increase and defines the total surface current into
separate components driven by wind, waves, and underlying circulation
patterns.
Drifters used during LASER had drogues (an attached flexible tether
with sensing instruments that collected data 60 cm below the surface);
however, a significant number of them lost their drogues due to bad
weather and only collected data 5 cm below the surface. John assesses
data from drifters with and without drogues to calculate wind-driven
currents at these different depths. “The ocean surface is very difficult
to sample, but it’s where buoyant pollutants like oil reside,” he said.
“Including data from undrogued drifters, which sit right at the
surface, can provide needed insight into this area.”
So far, John has observed that wind and wave forcing caused
significant changes in water column velocity as his calculations neared
the ocean surface, consistent with recent CARTHE studies (Laxague et.al., 2017 and Haza et al., 2018).
Undrogued drifters traveled approximately 1.5 times faster than drogued
drifters due to wind and wave influence. Furthermore, while wind-driven
currents are known to travel to the right of the wind direction, he
observed that currents deeper in the water column traveled further to
the right than shallower currents.
John plans to investigate if convergence zones transport or hold
surface debris between different water masses and how large wind and
wave events change the structure of existing ocean currents and what
happens after the wind and waves subside. He also plans to compare LASER
data with data collected during the Grand Lagrangian Deployment (GLAD) and Submesoscale Processes and Lagrangian Analysis on the Shelf (SPLASH) experiments to explore how factors such as seasonality and regional effects influence surface drifter transport.
His Learning
Working with Dr. Özgökmen provided John the opportunity to
participate in major Gulf of Mexico field experiments that used
technologies such as GPS-equipped ocean drifters, drones, planes, and
satellites to measure ocean currents. He gained experience assembling
and deploying drifters during the LASER project and took part in small
boat operations, drifter deployments, and drone experiments during
SPLASH. Prior to these large field experiments, there were months of
preparation and collaboration. “It was an amazing experience being out
on the Gulf of Mexico, living aboard a ship, and building and deploying
ocean drifters with the whole scientific team,” he said. “Being part of
this large group of scientists working towards a common goal was not
only a lot of fun but also made me proud to be part of the CARTHE group
and work on the leading edge of oceanography.”
His Future
John plans to seek a position at a university, government agency, or
private environmental agency after completing his Ph.D. and hopes to
continue his current research path. “The career I’ve chosen has given me
amazing opportunities to travel while conducting and presenting my
research,” he said. “I love the work that I do.”
Praise for John
Dr. Özgökmen praised John’s work with the consortium’s LASER and
SPLASH experiments, which provided data to John’s ongoing Ph.D.
research. He explained, “[Our research] is a very special project,
facilitating collaboration at an unprecedented level and duration across
oceanographic sciences and communities.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like John Lodise and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the consortia website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Previous research has shown that dolphins in regions affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill have poor body condition, reproductive failure, lung disease, and adrenal system injury. The Consortium for Advanced Research on Marine Mammal Health Assessment (CARMMHA) outreach plan was shaped by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative’s (GoMRI) mission to improve society’s ability to understand, respond, and mitigate impacts of petroleum pollution and related stressors on the marine and coastal ecosystems, with an emphasis on conditions found in the GoM.
The materials in this lesson plan were developed as a workshop in partnership with the Girl Scouts of America and follow the Girl Scout patch model of Discover, Connect, Take Action. The materials are designed to be presented together as a two-hour educational workshop, but can also be used independently.
Materials
CARMMHA Guide for Educators (K-12): This guide contains the overall lesson plan and explains how to use the included materials and activities.
Activities (instructions contained in Guide for Educators): Four engaging, hands-on activities designed to be scientifically accurate and incorporate real information from CARMMHA field projects, including an oil spill demonstration and clean-up, a fin ID card matching game, a mock dolphin health assessment, and a bioaccumulation relay game.
Activity #1 – Oil Spill Simulation and Clean-Up
Activity #2 – Fin ID Matching Game
Activity #3 – Mock Dolphin Health Assessment
Activity #4 – Bioaccumulation Relay
Worksheets:
Dolphin Coloring Page (K-6 Grade): This worksheet is designed to engage young students and get them thinking about how dolphins may be exposed to environmental oil. It can be used as part of the workshop or as an independent activity.
Learning to Analyze Graphs (Grades 7-12): This worksheet highlights the population modeling component of the CARMMHA consortium and challenges students to understand the parts of the graph as well as its interpretation and biological implications. It can be used as part of the workshop or as an independent activity.
Medical Exam Checklist (for use in Activity #3 above): This worksheet is used during the Mock Dolphin Health Assessment activity and reviews the major components of a real dolphin health assessment along with the associated Dolphin Health Assessment Presentation slides.
Notes from the Fieldis an educational newsletter created for middle school students that focuses on issues relevant to coastal communities in southeast Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. Exploring topics ranging from periwinkle snails to tropical storms to coastal erosion, each issue includes educational hands-on activities, puzzles, term glossaries, interviews with scientists, and scientific research.
Click the newsletter covers below to download the PDF!
Ocean models that utilize surface drifter data can provide oil spill
responders with important information about the floating oil’s direction
and speed as it moves along the ocean surface. However, surface
drifters, like the floating material they represent, tend to cluster
along strong fronts and eddies. This clustering can result in important
consequences for surface drifter turbulence and transport data at
smaller scales. Jenna Pearson
is investigating the extent that material clustering impacts the
accuracy of turbulence calculations and searching for potential factors
or processes involved.
Jenna developed her scientific interests as an undergraduate student
at Northeastern Illinois University. While working as a math tutor, she
decided to major in Mathematics after a pre-calculus professor
encouraged her to pursue it as a career. She added Earth Science as a
second major after serving as an Army National Guard medic in Iraq
during her undergraduate studies. “I was only deployed for about a year,
but I was a medic for eight years in total,” she said. “I transitioned
from being a medic to a math and science major because there were more
tools at my disposal to help global populations, rather than just
treating a handful of individuals at a time.”
Jenna gained experience using math and science to solve larger
problems through summer research programs. She participated in the 2013
Harvard School of Public Health Summer Program in Epidemiology with Dr.
Alkes Price, where she used statistical methods to infer consistency
across genetic variants associated with increased Type II Diabetes risk.
The following year, she spent two summer months with Dr. Bjorn
Sandstede at Brown University’s Division of Applied Mathematics, where
she modeled microscopic and macroscopic traffic flow. While there, she
learned about various tools used for modeling dynamic systems and how to
apply data assimilation schemes.
During her summer at Brown University, Jenna met with Dr. Baylor Fox-Kemper
who felt that her skillset would fit well with his CARTHE research, and
she joined his team as a Ph.D. student in 2015. “The transition to
CARTHE-related work was natural because of my desire to look at
environmental problems,” said Jenna. “My summer research at Brown
involved incorporating Eulerian and Lagrangian data into traffic models,
which led me look specifically at the drifters and think critically
about the types of statistics we were looking at.”
Her Work
When examining fluid motion, researchers use a Lagrangian approach
(such as drifters) to trace how ocean surface waters flow through an
area over time and a Eulerian approach (such as a fixed buoy or weather
station) to observe fluid dynamics at a specific location. Jenna
initially studied drifters similar to those deployed during CARTHE’s Grand Lagrangian Deployment (GLAD) experiment and Lagrangian Submesoscale Experiment (LASER).
She assessed the drifters’ behavior using velocity structure functions
to better understand turbulence in a study area. She and her colleagues
compared their statistics to those from a Eulerian model and noticed
that the drifter-derived Lagrangian functions represented unrealistic
conditions compared with other CARTHE research.
Jenna used an algorithm to determine that this disagreement occurred
because surface drifters are “biased” at smaller scales when compared to
Eulerian calculations, meaning that they don’t sample the velocity
field equally at all times. She observed that the convergence of
drifters into special flow structures, such as fronts, skews the
Lagrangian statistics away from the Eulerian ones. “Previous studies
show that drifters tend to cluster in regions of strong frontogenesis or
can remain trapped in persistent eddies, leading them to only sample
certain portions of the velocity field at a given time,” she explained.
“We have found that velocity structure functions are biased below 10 km,
but agree at scales above that mark. This means good things for people
who would like to know mesoscale statistics, but also means that
statistics below 10 km need to be cautiously interpreted.”
Jenna’s team is currently working on an observational study that
pairs data from LASER drifters and X-band radar to validate these
findings and determine the extent that clustering impacts results. Their
preliminary results are consistent with their previous observations.
They plan to incorporate more descriptive statistics and probability
density functions to determine why bias occurs at smaller scales and how
much of the Eulerian-Lagrangian difference can be contributed to this
sampling bias. Jenna hopes that her research will help researchers
collect and interpret drifter data more accurately, particularly for use
in tracking spilled oil and algal blooms.
“A suite of biogeochemical floats is currently being released in
various parts of the global ocean. There is then a question as to
whether or not we can trust that these drifters represent the entire
velocity field or if the statistics we wish to calculate from them may
be biased because of their sampling behavior,” said Jenna. “Alongside my
assessment of the Eulerian-Lagrangian differences, I am also developing
a new theory related to structure functions and spectra that allows us
to use biogeochemical data in a similar fashion to conservative tracers
like temperature. This will hopefully give a better picture of what is
happening in the upper ocean.”
Her Learning
Jenna’s time at the Fox-Kemper lab was a positive experience that
helped her grow academically and as an individual. Conducting field work
and attending conferences with her colleagues highlighted the deep
connection between her interests in public health and ocean health and
sparked her desire for future coastal dynamics and ocean biogeochemistry
projects. Teaching opportunities during her doctoral research helped
her develop a strategic and tested teaching method while learning more
about her own field. “I also fine-tuned my music skills by singing and
playing guitar in our Fox-Kemper Lab-wide band!” she said.
Her Future
Jenna is applying for post-doc positions and hopes to continue
teaching and conducting research as a professor. Before she graduates,
she will return to the Summer@Brown Program
and teach the course “Studying the Ocean from Blackboard to Drones” to
college-bound high school students. She encourages high school students
to take diverse science courses and speak with researchers in different
fields to get a good sense of what a scientific career path may entail.
“We are always learning and questioning our environment, and it can take
some time for you to find what makes you get up in the morning,” she
said. “Remember: it is your path, and you should define it.”
Praise for Jenna
Dr. Fox-Kemper described Jenna as an incredibly hard-working and
determined student and researcher whose work addresses a fundamental
paradox of the CARTHE research: that Lagrangian statistics (from
drifters) and Eulerian statistics (from gridded models) seemed to
disagree at the submesoscale range. He explained that her research was
initially difficult to publish, and she received skeptical feedback from
reviewers because her results had substantial implications for
drifter-based science. Jenna pushed through the obstacles, resulting in a
stronger paper and important realizations about removing model
uncertainties.
Dr. Fox-Kemper also reflected on her creative and fun-loving nature
around the lab, “She’s famous for making science-themed cakes to
celebrate defenses and prelims! A recent one involved green-colored
goldfish crackers to indicate the effects of hypoxia. She’s a great
presence in our lab.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Jenna Pearson and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program
recognizes graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded
projects and builds community for the next generation of ocean science
professionals. Visit the CARTHE website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal published an article that describes
how oysters (that filter up to 50 gallons of water a day) fare under
hazardous environmental conditions. One such hazard was the 2010 Deepwater Horizon
incident that was followed by several riverine freshwater releases in
an attempt to keep oil away from vulnerable Louisiana shores, which
support several seafood industries.
The GoMRI is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board
makes the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the
intellectual quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the
GoMRI research. All research data, findings and publications will be
made publicly available. The program was established through a $500
million financial commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Many fish that were exposed to Deepwater Horizon oil
survived; however, they may have experienced later-in-life impacts that
affected their ability to survive longer than fish that did not
experience oil exposure. Alexis Khursigara investigates if oil-induced latent effects in red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus)
alters behavior, particularly the ability to learn and compete with
other fish, which are critical to fish survival. Her research addresses
hypotheses concerning sublethal effects of oil and may help inform long
term population health and fishery management.
Alexis’s parents introduced her to the scientific world at a young
age. She spent her childhood summers in her father and step-mother’s
neuroscience labs, working with Schwann (neurilemma) cells, helping care
for mice and rats, and conducting her own chemical interaction
mini-experiments using milk powder and dry ice. Her mother sparked her
interest in fish and marine science through trips to the aquarium, where
Alexis would spend hours.
Alexis later completed undergraduate and master’s degrees in
secondary educational biology at Fairfield University and enrolled in
the University of Texas at Austin’s marine science doctoral program.
Wanting to focus on how environmental stressors affect fish physiology
and behavior, she joined Dr. Andrew Esbaugh’s fish lab researching how oil-induced changes in fish physiology and behavior affect their performance.
“My love for the ocean, fish, and the environment are really what
connects me to my research. I love being able to study how human
activity impacts our environments and how fish react to those changes,”
said Alexis. “I’ve been very fortunate to have parents and people in my
life who have always encouraged me to pursue my passions.”
Her Work
Alexis examines the performance of oil-exposed fish compared to
control fish as they compete for food and dominance, and conducts
long-term group experiments where growth indicates competitive success.
In the one-on-one trials, fish are individually fitted with an
elastomer and acclimated in a tank without food for 48 hours. She then
observed each fish for 15 minutes, twice a day, for 5 days recording
their location in the tank, food acquisition, and interactions such as
attacks or avoidance. She also took images of their fins before and
after the trials to assess fin damage caused by attacks from other fish.
These metrics provided an overall behavior score; the fish with the
highest score was deemed dominant while the lower score was the
subordinate fish. In group trials, dominance was primarily assessed
through specific growth rate (how much a fish grew per day). Fish that
obtained more food and had a faster growth rate were considered
dominant. In both scenarios, she found that oil-exposed fish tended to
be subordinate when there were limited resources.
Alexis is currently conducting week-long fish experiments using a
maze with rewards such as food or another fish at the end to understand
how oil-induced changes in neurological function may alter fish
behavior. She measures fish’s learning ability by observing the amount
of time, distance swam, and number of wrong turns each fish takes to
reach the reward. She also conducts trials on fish traits such as
boldness or sociability to determine changes in a fish’s personality.
While these trials are still being conducted, early results indicate
that sociability-related behavior changes occur following oil exposure.
“While these tests themselves don’t tell us the state of a fish’s
neurological function, shifts in performance in these tests can indicate
altered function,” explained Alexis. “For example, if oil-exposed fish
aren’t able to learn at the same rate as unexposed fish or if a fish
demonstrates certain personality traits before exposure that change
after exposure, it may indicate some neurological impairment.”
Alexis is currently considering her results in the context of
findings from other RECOVER researchers. So far, she has noticed that
aerobic scope is an important factor in dominance hierarchies and that
fish with a higher aerobic scope (the difference between minimum and
maximum oxygen consumption rate) often become dominant. She explained
that when oil reduces an individual fish’s aerobic scope, it also
reduces their ability to compete in social settings, predisposing them
to social subordination. “A major reason for my investigation into
personality and learning behaviors came from transcriptomics data run by
another group in the consortium,” said Alexis. “They saw that pathways
related to neurological and cognitive function were altered following
oil exposure, so we’re using personality and learning behaviors to
understand how.”
Her Learning
Working in Esbaugh’s lab taught Alexis communication and
collaboration skills and introduced her to new techniques that made her a
better researcher. Before joining Esbaugh’s team, she felt hesitant
about conducting molecular research due to lack of experience and
training. However, his encouragement and insistence on learning
molecular techniques eventually led her to a project examining
oil-exposed and control fish’s gene expression rates of corticoid
receptors as indicators of chronic stress. “I spent months trying to
design a primer that would work with our species. Finally, after weeks
of failure, I finally found primers that worked,” recalled Alexis.
“While this was a really big moment for my research, it was also a big
moment for me personally. It showed me that if I get past my hesitations
about what I can and can’t do, I can open myself up to some really cool
things.”
A memorable experience for Alexis was working with her University of
Texas community following Hurricane Harvey. Although the storm caused a
lot of damage, personal loss, and hard times, she grew closer to others
in her lab and her department. She also learned how to recover should
another storm hit – a very real possibility when working in coastal
facilities. “People were helping others pack up their stuff, getting rid
of destroyed belongings, finding new places to live, and replacing lost
items,” she said. “We’ve always had a strong sense of community here at
the University of Texas Marine Science Institute (UTMSI), but going
through something like that made us even closer. I’m incredibly grateful
for the leadership and guidance I received not only from my advisor,
but the faculty and administration at UTMSI in getting through that
difficult time.”
Her Future
Alexis hopes to enter a post-doc position after graduating and find a
university position that would allow her to teach and run a research
lab. She offered some advice for students considering a career in
science: love what you do, build a strong science base, take advantage
of any and all resources and opportunities, and, most importantly, have a
strong support system.
Praise for Alexis
Dr. Esbaugh described Alexis as a bright and hard-working student who
is eager to try new projects and methods and takes constructive
criticism well. He praised her contributions to his lab and to the
RECOVER consortium, particularly their research direction. “Her project
started as an intuitive ecological extension of a well-known oil effect
in fish – cardiac impairment – but through her own observation and
initiative, it moved into a new and exciting direction,” he said. “She’s
been the driving force for an area of research that our entire
consortium is embracing. As a student, I could not have asked for more.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Alexis Khursigara and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the RECOVER website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
During the Deepwater Horizon incident, some models predicted
that oil would reach the Florida coastline. However, much of the oil
became trapped in cyclonic-like currents, which are eddy flows
associated with the Loop Current, and exited the Gulf of Mexico without
reaching the Florida coast. To improve model representations of the Loop
Current, Luna Hiron utilizes in situ and
satellite data to investigate interactions between the Loop Current and
its associated eddies and how they affect the Loop Current’s
variability, which can improve predictions for where floating material
such as oil may travel.
From a young age, Luna often questioned the “why” of things. This
natural curiosity and a passion for the ocean, like her father had,
inspired her to become an oceanographer when she was an elementary
school student. Her inspiration continued, and she completed a
bachelor’s degree in oceanography at the Federal University of Santa
Catarina in Brazil and became a research technician collecting and
analyzing data for the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences’ Bermuda
Atlantic Time-Series Study (BATS). “My experience with BATS gave me new
insights about the career of an oceanographer,” said Luna. “I developed a
good understanding of large scale oceanography and wanted to broaden my
horizons [through further education].”
Luna searched for a Ph.D. program where she could learn more about
mesoscale ocean processes, which are complex and crucial to
understanding ocean dynamics. She was drawn to Dr. Nick Shay’s
research about the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current and accepted a Ph.D.
position in his lab at the University of Miami. “It is exciting to
explore new problems that have not have been solved yet,” she said. “The
Loop Current system is complex and involves both large and mesoscale
features. My goal is to bring some insight into these dynamics and help
better understand the Loop Current system.”
Her Work
The Loop Current has several life cycle stages, which can be tracked
by satellite, that include retracting (the Loop Current goes directly
from the Yucatan Channel to the Florida Strait), bulging (the Loop
Current grows and enters the Gulf of Mexico and forms a “loop” before
exiting through the Florida Strait), and shedding (the Loop Current
becomes unstable and sheds an eddy. Luna combines satellite data from
2009 – 2011 that documented the Loop Current’s evolving stages and its
associated eddies with water column data on temperature, salinity, and
velocity (surface to 2900 m depth). Her analyses show that cyclone
eddies often become stronger near the Loop Current, attracting the
surrounding flow to the eddy’s center and strengthening the Loop Current
as they interface. She also observed that cyclone eddies appear to
interact with the Loop Current during all of the Current’s life stages
and not just the shedding stages, an important insight into Loop Current
dynamics.
Luna’s observations about how eddies intensify or dissipate are
crucial to forecasting oil transport and demonstrate the importance of
sampling the ocean during all Loop Current life stages. “If an eddy is
in a stage of intensification near an oil patch, it will attract the oil
to the cyclone’s center and push it downwards, capturing the oil within
the eddy and preventing it from reaching the coast, which is what
happened during the Deepwater Horizon spill,” she said.
“However, if the eddy is starting to break up, it will spread the oil at
the surface and increase the area contaminated.”
Her Learning
Luna’s work in Dr. Shay’s lab exposed her to a wide range of research
topics, such as air-sea interactions and ocean dynamics, which enriched
her learning and provided her with multidisciplinary knowledge. She
learned new approaches to the scientific process, especially the
importance of identifying knowledge gaps and generating a hypothesis
before attempting to answer questions. She explained that the lab’s
collaborative nature taught her about teamwork, communicating science to
the public, and conducting science with integrity and honesty.
Luna shared her most unforgettable experiences working with Dr. Shay.
“A memorable moment was when I flew in the WP-3D aircraft from NOAA
during the post-Hurricane Nate survey. It was incredible to be in a
plane that flew through so many strong hurricanes,” she said. “Another
great memory was when we were on a cruise deploying floats in the Gulf
of Mexico and about seven dolphins were swimming in front of the ship
for at least 30 minutes – it was amazing!”
Her Future
Luna hopes to pursue advanced studies or a position in a research
institute after graduation. For students considering a science career,
she suggests that they stay motivated, find what they love to do, and
believe in themselves. “It is important to not be intimidated by other
students or professors – ask questions and make contact! All of this is
part of the learning process, and we always have more to learn and
exchange with each other.”
Praise for Luna
Dr. Shay described Luna as a talented and energetic student and
praised her collaboration with students and researchers across various
disciplines and institutions. He explained that she is a productive team
member working with Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) mooring
data, generating model simulations that investigate Loop
Current-associated eddies, and helping collect shipboard measurements
using EM-APEX (Electromagnetic-Autonomous Profiling Explorers) floats.
“Luna is preparing a manuscript for submission to a top tier journal
and has submitted an abstract for presentation to the 2019 Gulf of
Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science,” said Shay. “Her work is central
to understanding the dispersion of hydrocarbons from a subsurface oil
spill in the vicinity of strong subsurface currents.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Luna Hiron and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Phytoplankton and bacteria in the northern Gulf of Mexico interact
closely at the food web base and provide vital food and nutrients to
marine life at higher trophic levels. During the Deepwater Horizon
incident, these pervasive organisms played an important role in oil
bioremediation before and after the application of chemical dispersants,
which broke up surface slicks into smaller droplets and enhanced
microbial degradation. Samantha “Sam” Setta,
who recently completed her master’s degree, used molecular-level
techniques to learn how oil and dispersant exposure affects the
abundance of and interactions between Gulf bacteria and phytoplankton.
Sam’s interest in a scientific career was sparked by a high school
aquatic science class that emphasized marine science and conservation.
As a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, she changed her
major from chemistry to biology to physics and ultimately settled on
marine biology with a focus on freshwater.
“Growing up in Austin, I was surrounded by parks, lakes, and natural
springs that influenced my thinking of the world and led me to an
interest in conservation, especially water conservation,” said Sam. She
enhanced her undergraduate education by conducting research in Mexico
and working with a graduate student at the university’s Marine Science
Institute, which provided work experience and insight into graduate
student life.
However, Sam was still unsure about pursuing a graduate degree and
decided to explore different fields to pinpoint her passion. She worked
as a research technician on algal biofuel in Texas and later as a
research associate with Dr. Brian Roberts studying the Deepwater Horizon’s
effects on Louisiana salt marsh vegetation and biogeochemistry. The oil
spill research inspired her to pursue graduate school, and she began
her master’s studies with Dr. Antonietta Quigg at Texas A&M University at Galveston investigating the spill’s effects on microbial community composition.
Her Work
Phytoplankton are microscopic photosynthesizers that transform
atmospheric carbon dioxide into food for grazers and other microscopic
heterotrophs. Bacteria then recycle the used carbon into a form that
heterotrophs can eat again, starting a microbial loop of recycling and
reusing organic carbon. Sam’s research as a master’s student was to
learn how oil and dispersant may have affected these microbial
interactions.
Sam and her colleagues incubated Gulf of Mexico microbial communities
with different oil and oil plus dispersant concentrations in large
tanks that mimicked conditions around the spill area. She extracted DNA
from bacteria in tank water samples, amplified identifiable DNA regions
using polymerase chain reactions, and measured and recorded nucleotides
using DNA sequencing techniques. Sam is using the sequencing data to
characterize the composition of bacterial and phytoplankton communities
under different exposure scenarios.
Samantha is now a Ph.D. student at the University of Rhode Island and
continues her oil spill research in her free time. She is currently
analyzing the bacteria-phytoplankton interactions for each exposure
using a network analysis that correlates community composition over time
under different oil and dispersant exposures. Her findings will
ultimately identify taxa that play a key role in oil bioremediation,
their correlation with certain phytoplankton and other eukaryotic
organisms, and how oil and dispersant exposure change these taxa.
“Highlighting the key players that respond to spilled oil will help
better direct future studies and oil spill mitigation,” explained Sam.
“This information can be used to target key taxa in other laboratory
studies and provide more information to policy makers on the pros and
cons of using dispersant in the event of an oil spill.”
Her Learning
Sam’s research provided her with frequent experience working in a
collaborative environment. She described her time with Dr. Quigg’s group
as encouraging and enriching, “I found that the tank experiments we did
once a year with the entire research consortium were the best time to
collaborate and get to know the research everyone else was doing as part
of the project. Everyone involved in the ADDOMEx consortium has been
very supportive.”
Her Future
Sam recently began Ph.D. studies in oceanography at the University of
Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. She suggests that
students use their time in graduate school to learn where their
interests lie before committing to a specific scientific career.
Praise for Samantha
Dr. Quigg described Sam as a student who is smart, determined, and
fun to work with. She explained that despite Sam’s complex master’s
research for the ADDOMEx consortium and her tremendous determination and
ability to work well with others made her project a success. “Sam was
one of those students who you meet and immediately know they will be
both a great scientist and colleague,” said Quigg. “Her research
required her to work on the cutting edge of a variety of disciplines,
and she rose to the challenge and even finished her master’s in two
years. I look forward to watching her continue to develop her craft as
she starts her Ph.D. at the University of Rhode Island this fall.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Samantha Setta and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the ADDOMEx website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Oil, gases, and bubbles jet out together during a deep-ocean
petroleum blowout, and the oil quickly breaks up into different-sized
droplets. Predicting the sizes of these droplets is critical to
determine how long it will take the oil to reach the ocean’s surface and
the resulting oil slick’s size. Aditya Aiyer
is developing a new approach for state-of-the-art models that simulate
oil’s behavior as it moves through turbulent flows and track the
subsequent different-sized oil droplets’ breakup and coalescence. The
improved simulations of the fate and evolution of oil droplets in
deepwater plumes can inform decisions about dispersant application.
Aditya developed an interest in science from his father, an
enthusiastic physics professor who loved to explain the world around
him. Seeing his father’s passion inspired Aditya to pursue a bachelor’s
degree in mechanical engineering at the Birla Institute of Technology
and Science, one of India’s leading private institutions. He became
attracted to the practical applications of fluid dynamics while working
towards a master’s degree in physics. Looking at everyday things, such
as water flowing from a faucet or cream being added to coffee, from a
physics perspective fascinated him. Aditya later took a research
associate position at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research to
study atmospheric flows and cloud formation, an unsolved problem when
conducting climate modeling. Wanting to delve further into unresolved
questions in his field, Aditya began exploring Ph.D. programs and joined
Dr. Charles Meneveau’s team researching oil spills.
“After my time at Birla Institute of Technology and Science, I wanted
to further explore how I could use my knowledge of physics and fluid
dynamics to help make an impact on our lives,” said Aditya. “I’m very
excited to work with oil spills, as the results of our research could
have a tremendous impact on the environment.”
His Work
Aditya uses Large Eddy Simulations to investigate the dynamics
between oil droplets and turbulent flows. These model outputs allow him
to accurately depict turbulent flows and their effects on oil breakup,
either as an oil jet (similar to a deep-water blowout) or in a
less-turbulent environment. “Traditional models use Reynolds Averaged
Navier Stokes Equations, which need a separate model for turbulence.
Using the Large Eddy Simulations, we can capture the effects of
turbulence directly, making our simulation closer to what is actually
happening in a blowout,” said Aditya. The combination of simulations and
equations better depicts the concentration of oil droplets and how they
change due to breakup, coalescence, and advection.
Aditya and his colleagues use existing data from similar experiments
to validate their model. He explained that their model can predict oil
concentrations and size distributions at a given location and time
during a blowout. The droplet size distribution tells him how many
droplets of different sizes have been generated due to breakup and
coalescence, allowing him to infer the droplet’s fate. “Larger droplets
would move quickly to the surface, while smaller ones would be more
influenced by the local turbulence and might remain underwater. We can
also evaluate how much of the oil volume would reach the surface and the
time it would take them to do so,” explained Aditya. “Such results can
be used to build simpler, better models that can give responders an idea
of where they should apply dispersants or other chemicals to deal with
the spill.” He hopes to expand his team’s simulation models to include
other factors that may affect oil fate, such as dispersant application,
to better inform responders’ decision making.
His Learning
Working with Meneveau taught Aditya the importance of approaching
problems from the foundation up. He learned to approach problems in
sections, starting with the issue’s first principles and then
continuously incorporating the issue’s more complex aspects until he
reaches his goal. Aditya also reflected on his experiences in the GoMRI
science community and engaging with other scientists at the Gulf of
Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science Conference, “There are hundreds
of people [in the GoMRI community] working on a myriad of topics from
the chemistry and physics of the oil all the way to the ecological
effects and effects on local aquatic life. It was humbling to see that
my research is also playing a small role in saving our environment.”
His Future
Aditya plans to work towards a university faculty position, where he
can apply his love for teaching and working in a research environment,
or towards conducting research in a federal or industry position. He
said that students interested in a scientific career should remember the
importance of having strong fundamentals, “Most ideas a scientist comes
up with aren’t due to them knowing some esoteric part of the field, but
by having very strong basics. The ability to think clearly and make
good inferences based on the fundamental principles of your field is a
skill I think every student pursuing science must cultivate and make a
part of their repertoire.”
Praise for Aditya
Dr. Meneveau praised Aditya’s contributions to his research team,
particularly his development of their new approach to the Large Eddy
Simulation toolset. “Thanks to Aditya’s work, we are now able to model
the evolution of the entire size distribution,” he said. “Aditya has
contributed excellent ideas and done careful tests of the approach he
has developed. We look forward to applying the model to realistic flow
conditions.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Aditya Aiyer and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
When the Deepwater Horizon incident occurred, not much was known about how conditions in the deep sea would affect oil biodegradation. Juan Viamonte
uses high-pressure reactors that simulate conditions at depth to
observe microbial degradation and help predict what might happen should
another deep-ocean oil spill occur.
Juan discovered his love for science when he was eighteen and
searching for a career path. Unsure of what he wanted to study, he chose
chemistry on a rather unorthodox basis – because a girl he liked was
studying chemistry. “When I was in high school, many people already knew
that they wanted to be, but I had no clue. I didn’t know that I wanted
to be a scientist my whole life – I guess you could say science found
me!” Juan laughed. He began a chemical engineering degree at the
University of Zaragoza in his hometown in Spain. However, he believes he
truly fell in love with his work while conducting undergraduate
research at the University of Denmark. There, Juan discovered an
exciting “new world” with many opportunities to share research and learn
and grow as a scientist, inspiring him to pursue a master’s degree.
Juan completed his master’s in chemical and bioprocess engineering at
the Technical University of Hamburg (TUHH). He was already working on
his Ph.D. in chemistry there when his advisor Dr. Andreas Liese received
GoMRI funding and offered him a graduate position researching
biodegradation under high-pressure conditions. Juan accepted, thinking
about how several past oil spills had significantly impacted the Spanish
coastline’s flora and fauna. “One day we’ll have to turn to renewable
energy, but right now humanity depends on crude oil,” said Juan. “I’m
interested in what is going to happen in the crude oil industry once we
reach a point where we can’t extract any more or have to do dangerous
things like fracking to extract it. Many problems are arising from these
more extreme methods, and I want to help understand all of this dynamic
change.”
His Work
Oil-degrading microbes require oxygen to metabolize oil compounds. Juan and fellow C-IMAGE graduate students Steffen Hackbusch and Nuttapol Noirungsee combine microbes collected near the Deepwater Horizon
site with oil and seawater inside high-pressure reactors that simulate
conditions at 1,500 meters depth and 4° C. Juan observes the oxygen
consumption of microbes and monitors their biodegradation process. When
oxygen depletion, he assumes that the microbes have consumed all the oil
that they can. Juan then uses gas chromatography mass spectrometry to
analyze the reactor’s contents to determine the amount of oil that the
microbes degraded.
Juan explained, “Imagine that you put in one drop of crude oil at the
beginning of the process, and after one month the microorganisms have
finished eating the oil. Well, the microbes don’t eat all of the oil –
they only eat [certain compounds in it]. If you can determine how much
of the oil has been consumed in that time period, you can predict what
may happen to the crude oil in a realistic oil spill scenario.”
Juan is incorporating other variables, such as methane gas and
Corexit dispersant, into his high-pressure experiments to learn how
microbial oil degradation may change under different conditions. He also
developed a high-pressure system that can be regulated to 4,000 m depth
to test and compare possible differences in microbial degradation
between 1,500 and 4,000 m. Juan’s experiments are ongoing, but he plans
to develop prediction models based on his data that account for these
biodegradation variables. “Before DeepwaterHorizon,
we didn’t know how quickly oil was going to degrade at high-pressure.
Now, we have a hint,” said Juan. “With many other deep-water oil
ventures planned for the future, I hope my research can help us estimate
what percentage of oil would be degraded and to what extent if this or a
similar accident happened again.”
His Learning
Juan listed teamwork, interdisciplinary collaboration, and knowledge
sharing as the most important lessons he has learned through his GoMRI
research. Being a member of a large consortium, he networked with
scientists across many fields and learned the value of communication.
“If we don’t share this knowledge, we aren’t going to grow as humans or
as scientists,” said Juan. “The most important thing about science is
you cannot hide a secret. We are discovering how nature works –
communication is essential.” Dr. Liese commented that Juan reflects
these values in the way he conducts his research, saying “Juan is a very
open-minded person, who is always watching out to integrate [with our
collaborative] partners.”
Juan also discussed how learning about the biological aspects of his
work opened his eyes to a broader scope of his research. Trained in
chemical engineering, Juan had a limited background in biology but was
fascinated when he learned that certain microorganisms bloomed in the
presence of oil because they were able to consume and degrade it. “I was
used to taking Chemical A and Chemical B and a solvent and mixing them
all together to get a result. I wasn’t really aware that those actions
would cause organisms to do all of these really cool things. It was an
exciting realization for me!”
His Future
Juan hopes to continue his research after graduation. Whether his
scientific career is in industry or academia, he wants to continue
pursuing what he calls the most exciting part of his career – crude oil
research. He advises that students considering a scientific career
follow a similar mindset. “Whatever it is that makes you happy, chase
it. Don’t be convinced by society what an acceptable or more worthy
career is. In the end, you’ll be happier and more successful doing
something you love than doing something you think you ‘should’ be
doing.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Juan Viamonte and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the C-IMAGE website to learn more about their work.
By Stephanie Ellis and Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu with questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team released a publication about how oysters, which play a critical role in a healthy coastal wetland, fare when faced with oil exposure. The outreach publication also discusses how the Deepwater Horizon incident and subsequent response efforts affected oysters, a vital part of Louisiana’s seafood industry which is the nation’s second-largest seafood supplier.
Read Oysters and Oil Spills
to learn about how oysters and oyster reefs respond to extreme natural
and manmade events. The publication also highlights oyster restoration
projects.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team synthesizes
peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general audiences,
particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast. Sea Grant
offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently-held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
************
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Following the Deepwater Horizon incident, the National Center for Disaster Preparedness
surveyed households in highly-affected areas of Louisiana to track the
event’s impacts on the physical and social health of coastal families
and their communities. Kathryn Keating
facilitates subsequent surveys to assess long-term impacts and identify
attributes of children and families that are associated with resilience
or vulnerability to negative oil spill impacts. The survey’s
longitudinal data will help explain how people recover and rebound after
a disaster and provide guidance to those who create disaster response
plans and organize community support.
Kathryn grew up in Indiana and Central Florida, molding her into a
“proud Hoosier” with ties to the Gulf of Mexico. She entered an
undergraduate program at Indiana University as a non-traditional adult
student after nearly a decade away and discovered her interest in
sociology during a “Deviant Behavior and Social Control” course. She
took classes in sociology and social work, including a year-long
practicum at a local hospital that sparked her interest in medical
social work. Kathryn also worked part-time at the county’s emergency
youth shelter and volunteered at local social service agencies. She
graduated with dual bachelor’s degrees in sociology and social work in
2015.
Kathryn entered Portland State University’s Master of Social Work
program in 2015, where she completed a practicum for training mental
health professionals to work with underserved populations. While working
at a rural Oregon primary care clinic, she developed a passion for
working in healthcare and crisis settings in rural areas, where access
to and interaction with health and mental health care systems can be
significantly different than urban settings. Kathryn decided to continue
her development as a “hybrid scholar” through a sociology doctoral
program at Louisiana State University in 2016. Once in Louisiana, she
became a Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW). She joined Dr. Tim Slack’s
GoMRI-funded project Resilient Children, Youth, and Communities (RCYC)
as a research assistant at Louisiana State University and completed a
second sociology master’s degree while conducting her Ph.D. research.
“As a person who has lived and worked in rural places for most of my
life, I prefer work that allows me to engage with people living in small
communities and rural areas,” said Kathryn. “Once I got the ball
rolling with my education, I wanted to do right by myself and those who
have supported me by making the most of the opportunities I’ve been
given while staying true to my values and remembering where I’m from.”
Her Work
Kathryn’s research utilizes longitudinal surveys of Louisiana
families that build on 2014 data collected by the Baton Rouge Area
Foundation-funded Gulf Coast Population Impact Study (GCPI),
led by the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia
University’s Earth Institution, which surveyed households in randomly
selected coastal communities who experienced high rates of oiled
shorelines and BP compensation claims. The RCYC group conducted a second
wave of follow up surveys with the GCPI cohort in 2016 – 2017, and a
third wave that is currently underway. “A repeated cross-sectional
survey can tell you how the overall population of interest is changing,
but not about changes within units of analysis such as individuals,
families, or households,” explained Kathryn. “A longitudinal panel
survey is a particular type of design where the same sample of people
are surveyed at different points in time. By providing repeated measures
from the same people at different time points, this type of survey
allows us to assess changes in the experiences of individuals over
time.”
Kathryn helps coordinate and manage an eight-person field team, who
collects follow-up data from families across seven Louisiana parishes.
The team conducts face-to-face interviews in participants’ homes with
the same parent every two years and collects information about their
spill-related experiences, including economic changes, physical and
mental health symptoms, healthcare access, neighborhood and community
characteristics, and social media use. She and her team also host
hour-long focus groups with study participants in each affected
community to collect more in-depth qualitative information related to
the survey topics.
Kathryn’s master’s research included results from the first- and
second- wave surveys and focus groups on how affected families access
and interact with community healthcare resources. She used this data to
examine how federal and state entities define healthcare need and how
these definitions relate to the actual needs of those affected by Deepwater Horizon.
She then integrated her findings with data from the Health Resources
and Services Administration to further establish how community-level
health needs relate to individual recovery from the spill. Her Ph.D.
research builds on her master’s work and includes third-wave survey data
and qualitative focus group responses to examine change-over-time in
child and family disaster outcomes and the role of healthcare and
primary care resources in disaster resilience. Kathryn recently
participated in a brief interview highlighting her perspectives on RCYC research and their current activities.
Her Learning
Working with Dr. Slack and the RCYC project, Kathryn gained
first-hand experience conducting social research with an
interdisciplinary team and learned important lessons about communicating
research to stakeholder groups. She explained that her background in
direct-service provision had provided little experience in the
professional side of academia. Dr. Slack’s mentorship helped her
navigate institutional processes and understand norms in the field of
sociology. “From the start, Dr. Slack conveyed a sense of trust and
support for me as a graduate student that gave me confidence to take on
responsibility and challenge myself within our team,” said Kathryn. “I
hope to be involved in mentoring and advising others someday and plan to
afford them the same respect and trust.”
Kathryn’s experiences as a member of the GoMRI science community
helped her develop specialized research skills and meaningful
relationships with south Louisiana residents. She participated in the
annual Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science conference and
gained experience in sharing her research, contributing her
interdisciplinary perspective as a sociologist and social worker, and
learning to better understand multiple aspects of the Deepwater Horizon
incident. “Several members of the RCYC team are either in New Orleans
or at Columbia University in New York, so a great deal of our
communication is remote,” she added. “Some of my best memories have been
when we are able to collaborate in person. I enjoy being able to see my
colleagues in real life, laugh with them, and have space for slower
conversation.”
Her Future
Kathryn was named a 2018 – 2019 Gulf Research Program Science Policy Fellow
by the National Academy of Sciences, which is separate from her RCYC
research. She will spend one year as a fellow working at the Gulf Coast
Ecosystem Restoration Council in New Orleans, where science and policy
intersect in the region. “The upcoming fellowship and my time with RCYC
have given me a chance to build ongoing relationships and generate
knowledge with people in the Gulf region and specifically south
Louisiana – these ties are an important consideration for me going
forward.”
Kathryn hopes to work in policy-oriented and applied research related
to social services, public health, and mental health. She would love to
teach or mentor social science students in their research methods. She
suggests that students who are interested in a social science career
should focus on cultivation instead of competition. “Cultivation is the
intentional choice to focus your energy on the parts of your work and
non-work life that enliven your spirit and reflect your personal values,
including your skills, relationships, and habits,” explained Kathryn.
“Everyone’s path is unique. Many learners become involved in a field
like social work out of desire to enact social change. For those with a
propensity towards empirical inquiry, policy-oriented research can be an
exciting and surprising way to engage.”
Praise for Kathryn
Dr. Slack described Kathryn as a mature, conscientious, and dedicated
researcher and student. He noted that her social work background and
advanced social sciences training illustrates her abiding interest in
bridging research and practice. He described her work as “invaluable” as
the project’s study coordinator, which included managing human
resources, accounting, logistics, and team-building for field
interviewers and handling procedures for respondent incentives and
organizing focus groups.
“Kathryn has been very adept at understanding the technical side of
data collection while also staying attuned to the human side of research
team management and human-based research,” said Slack. “Many people can
do one or the other, but Kathryn has shown a unique capacity to balance
these different dimensions of her job. I cannot emphasize enough how
important she is to the success of this effort.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Kathryn Keating and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
By Stephanie Ellis and Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact sellis@ngi.msstate.edu for questions or comments.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Petroleum hydrocarbons released by oil spills can accumulate on
beaches and in nearshore sediments, potentially creating health risks
for humans and coastal organisms. However, the highly variable
conditions of beach environments make it difficult to determine the
long-term behavior and fate of hydrocarbons in sands and sediment. Smruthi Karthikeyan
combines bioinformatics and oil degradation data to examine microbial
responses to oil in beach environments and identify populations that act
as bioindicators of oil degradation and toxicity. Documenting microbial
indicators and producing oil degradation models for environmental
managers can help with future oil spill response plans for coastal
zones.
Smruthi grew up in Chennai, India, near one of the largest beaches in
the world, which sparked her interest in environmental health. Later,
she completed an undergraduate chemical engineering program at Anna
University because of its practical applications. She then transitioned
to Columbia University for her master’s environmental engineering
studies, which she considers an ideal interdisciplinary field that
unites science and technology. “Being in the environmental engineering
field gives me a lot of opportunities to view the environment from
different perspectives,” she said.
Smruthi’s Ph.D. advisor Dr. Kostas Konstantinidis
introduced her to the microbial world during one of his classes. She
was intrigued about using bioinformatics to elicit information from such
tiny creatures and was curious about the microbial role in
environmental pollutant biodegradation. Konstantinidis received GoMRI
funding in 2016 to research how microbes respond to oiling and identify
indicator species for oil degradation and toxicity in beach sands.
Accepting a position on his team made Smruthi excited about combining
her love of environmental preservation with microbial genomics.
Her Work
Smruthi conducts laboratory mesocosm experiments that mimic the in situ conditions found in the beach environment. She incubates Pensacola beach sand collected at different times during the Deepwater Horizon incident
in six acrylic chambers (three with oiled sand and three with pristine
sand) and replicates the tidal cycle by periodically adding and removing
water overlying the sand. While sensors monitor pH, oxygen, nutrient,
and temperature levels inside the chambers, she collects sand samples at
designated time intervals and analyzes the microbial community’s DNA
and RNA.
“Thanks to recent developments in cultivation-independent and
next-generation sequencing methods, we are able to see microbial
communities at a much higher resolution than ever before and identify
their activities and nutrient limitations,” said Smruthi. “We can answer
not only ‘Who is there?’ but also ‘What are they doing?’ from less than
a gram of sand sample.”
Smruthi’s analyses identify microbial populations with reduced
abundance after oil exposure and observe if they return after oil is
completely removed. Populations that do not return could warrant further
investigation to assess how long it may take an ecosystem to recover
after oiling. Her analyses also examine the gene content of individual
microbial populations and compare them to hydrocarbons used in the
experiment to determine which oil-degrading genes the microbes possess. A
microbe that is more abundant after oil exposure may be a viable
bioindicator of oil presence and biodegradation processes. Smruthi hopes
that comparing her microbial data to the in situ sensor data
can help develop an integrated conceptual model that allows predictions
of pathways and oil degradation rates needed for future forecasts of
recovery pathways.
Smruthi’s analyses have revealed a previously undiscovered microbial
genus that was below detection in clean sands but rapidly increased to
30% of the total microbial community in oiled sands. According to
publicly available databases, the species appears consistently in
oil-contaminated sediments worldwide, particularly as a responder to
other major oil spills, while being notably absent in unoiled
environments. The microbe is metabolically versatile and can feast on
oil and get the nitrogen it needs from the atmosphere, eliminating the
need to add potentially harmful fertilizers that encourage microbial oil
degradation. “It appears that this microbe belongs to a new genus of
keystone oil degraders that has gone unnoticed so far and thus could
represent a new model organism for oil bioremediation efforts,” said
Smruthi. “We proposed to name this new bacterial genus “Macondimonas,” as we recovered it from the Macondo oil spill.”
Her Learning
Smruthi’s experiences conducting GoMRI research opened her eyes to
many different perspectives of oil spill research. Working with her
advisor and their project’s principal investigator Dr. Markus Huettel
helped her see the multifaceted aspects of her research, while
interacting with scientists from different disciplines broadened her
scientific perspective. “As someone who did not have a background in
computational biology and marine ecology initially, this GoMRI grant has
greatly helped my venture into this new and fascinating area,” she
said. “It showed me that there’s a whole new realm out there filled with
these microscopic marvels while at the same time integrating my
engineering background.”
Her Future
Smruthi hopes to become a professor after completing her Ph.D. She
encourages students considering a career in science and technology by
telling them, “It is a rewarding and satisfying experience to actually
see that your work can someday help the environment and society in
whatever little way it can.”
Praise for Smruthi
Konstantinidis said that Smruthi is a hard worker with strong
analytical abilities and a tremendous capacity and desire to learn new
things. Her contributions helped his team explore new research ideas
that resulted in important discoveries, such as the new oil-degrading
bacteria. “[Our work with Smruthi] happened due to a bit of good luck,”
he said. “When the advisor that Smruthi was working with initially
decided to retire, I talked to Smruthi about the GoMRI project, and she
got really excited and wanted to join our research team. It was good
luck for all of us, I think!”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Smruthi Karthikeyan and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal recently redesigned their website, and it now includes a page dedicated to the Deepwater Horizon incident.
The page includes some information about how the spill and response
unfolded, links to Smithsonian articles covering research from the Gulf
of Mexico Research Initiative, and perspectives from two scientists
about other spills.
Check out the Ocean Portal’s new webpage Gulf Oil Spill!
The GoMRI is a
10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board
makes the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the
intellectual quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the
GoMRI research. All research data, findings and publications will be
made publicly available. The program was established through a $500
million financial commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Oil spill material that enters the water column may adhere to resuspended seafloor sediments and be transported to other areas. Stephan O’Brien
is investigating how physical factors, such as wind and waves, affect
the suspension and subsequent transport of sediments in the Mississippi
Sound and Bight. “Inorganic matter such as sediment is one of the
methods by which oil can be transported,” said Stephan. “By improving
our understanding of sediment dynamics, we can provide first responders
with information that can help them interpret how moving sediment may
affect oil transport.”
Stephan’s brother chose a scientific path in high school, sparking
Stephan’s interest in science. Schools in Stephan’s home of Trinidad and
Tobago follow the British system, where students choose a focus such as
arts or sciences when they enter high school. Then they narrow that
focus to a more specific field during their final two years before
entering university studies. When he was 14, Stephan followed his
brother’s example and chose math, physics, chemistry, and biology as his
primary focuses and later narrowed his scope to math and physics.
As an undergraduate at the University of the West Indies, Stephan
discovered his interest in hydrography after taking two hydrography
classes. Later, he applied to the University of Southern Mississippi and
started studies in their Hydrographic Science master’s program. His
final master’s project was planned to be a survey of Bay St. Louis,
Mississippi, in summer 2010. However, his intended survey region was
closed following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and Stephan moved his survey to Pearl River, Mississippi.
Stephan returned to Trinidad and Tobago to teach at the University of
the West Indies. While there, he realized that his island was suffering
from coastal erosion. This realization inspired him to return to the
University of Southern Mississippi as a Ph.D. student to research
sediment movement. While working with his advisor Dr. Jerry Wiggert,
their team became a part of the CONCORDE research group investigating
sediment movement and its relationship to oil transport. “There is a lot
of erosion that occurs along the eastern coast of our island country
because of the wave action,” said Stephan. “Just being aware of that
problem helped with the decision of what I’d like to do for my Ph.D.”
His Work
Focusing on the Mississippi Sound and Mississippi Bight, he analyzes
NASA’s remote sensing reflectance data () and uses an algorithm to
estimate surface sediment concentrations. He filters surface water
samples collected at the same time and location to quantify suspended
sediment concentrations and uses an in situ optical back-scatter instrument called a Laser In-Situ Scattering and Transmissiometry (LISST) to measure particle sizes.
Stephan uses the in situ suspended sediment concentrations
to ground truth the accuracy of a numerical model
(Coupled-Ocean-Atmosphere-Wave-Sediment transport model) that
characterizes how water masses move within the study domain. Particle
sizes can be varied in the model and forcing factors such as wind or
wave action can be varied and/or removed from the simulation. This
allows Stephan to analyze how each forcing factor changes over time and
how each environmental factor contributes to the direction and volume of
sediment transported within each sediment size class. “The numerical
model is similar to a weather forecast,” he explained. “While weather
forecasts use measurements to describe weather patterns over time, this
numerical model uses water column and atmospheric measurements to
describe how different physical factors affect ocean current movements
and, as a result, how much and in which direction sediment will be
transported.”
Stephan’s preliminary observations show elevated in situ
sediment and increased salinity in Spring 2016, suggesting a link
between shoreward advection from the continental shelf and subsequent
sediment resuspension. However, Stephan’s model results suggest that the
environmental factors driving sediment resuspension and transport in
Spring 2016 originated from Lake Borgne and moved east to the
Mississippi Bight rather than originating from the continental shelf as
initially hypothesized.
His Learning
Stephan considers himself a “scientist-in-training,” and his work
with researchers from different backgrounds has helped him learn other
research techniques. During the consortium’s spring 2016 cruise, he
conducted research alongside Naval Research Laboratory scientists, who
showed him how to operate an optical sensor. “Although it was not the
same optical instrument I was using to collect my samples, getting to
know the details about the sensor helped me get a better understanding
of the measurements I was taking in the Sound,” he said.
His Future
Stephan hopes to find a post-doc position with a strong focus on
sediment transport, perhaps in Holland or Germany, to gain additional
research experience before returning home. He hopes to apply his
research skills and experience towards addressing Trinidad’s and
Tobago’s coastal erosion problem with Trinidadian government agencies.
His suggestion to students who are interested in science is to speak
with other researchers/scientists to get a better understanding of what
their fields entail. They should consider gaining some experience
through internships or volunteer positions to get a better understanding
of actual scientific jobs. “Science is so broad – once you get
experience, you can see the different scientific avenues available,” he
said.
Praise for Stephan
Wiggert believes that Stephan’s personality and temperament are best
captured by the concept of “quiet competence.” He praised Stephan’s
diligent, self-motivated, and hard-working approach to his research,
which helped Stephan develop a diverse set of observational,
programming, and data management skills during his dissertation work.
Wiggert also praised Stephan’s determination to share his science,
explaining that he has been extremely active in presenting his research
findings at scientific meetings and participating in community outreach.
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Stephan O’Brien and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the CONCORDE website to learn more about their work.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team released a Fact Sheet that uses easy-to-understand graphics and descriptions about how some oil accumulated at shorelines, on the ocean’s surface, in an underwater plume, and on the seafloor.
Oil also provided a food source for certain microbes who increased
their numbers where oil was present to ingest it. Learn more about the
role that microbes play in oil fate: Microbes and oil: What’s the connection?
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team
synthesizes peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general
audiences, particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast.
Sea Grant offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United
States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently-held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
************
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team released a publication that provides helpful information about storms and oil spills. Oil and chemicals from damaged rigs and vessels can form slicks that can pollute marine and shoreline ecosystems. If there is an existing oil slick offshore during a storm, high winds and rough seas can help to break up the slick before it comes ashore. If there is already oiling along coastlines, storm surges can push the oil further inland.
Read Storms and Spills
to learn what to do and who to contact if a storm causes a spill near
you. You can also read about oil spills from past storms in 1989
(Hugo), 2005 (Katrina and Rita), 2012 (Isaac and Sandy), and 2017
(Maria).
Read more about research related to storms and spills:
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team synthesizes
peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general audiences,
particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast. Sea Grant
offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently-held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
************
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Oil is a complex mixture of chemicals with different degradation
behaviors and toxicity levels. Understanding how the compounds in
spilled oil, particularly toxic compounds, change with weathering is
important to predicting oil’s persistence in the environment. Meredith Evans Seeley
analyzed how oil compounds are preserved or removed over time in
coastal systems that have different hydrographic activity levels. Her
research will help determine which coastal environments are more likely
to retain toxic compounds and require more attention from responders.
Meredith grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast and loved learning how
different systems work in her science classes. She discovered an
interest in marine science during a scuba diving trip with her older
brother. The ocean and coral reefs they visited were unlike anything she
had ever seen, and she wanted to learn everything about the marine
world.
As an undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma, Meredith worked in
a lab investigating invasive aquatic species and was able to travel the
country conducting coastal restoration projects. After completing a
biology bachelor’s degree, she knew she wanted to study threats to ocean
health, so she applied for and entered the master’s program in marine
science at the University of Texas at Austin. There, she worked in Dr. Zhanfei Liu’s lab researching Deepwater Horizon oil’s chemical evolution in coastal Louisiana for the DROPPS consortium.
“I’ve always been most motivated by what makes logical sense to me.
The oceans play a critical role in the functionality of our climate, so
logically we should preserve the integrity of the oceans as best we
can,” said Meredith. “Truthfully, though, I am also a very empathetic
person. When I see that species and ecosystems are at risk, I really
sympathize and want to help fix the problem. These fit together to make
me keenly interested in understanding threats such as oil spills and
protecting the Gulf for future generations.”
Her Work
Meredith initially focused on the weathering of petroleum
hydrocarbons in oil-soaked sand patties, tar, and oil sheens collected
from three different coastal environments: a high-energy beach front, a
low-energy sandy inlet, and a very-low-energy back-barrier marsh. She
measured the concentrations of individual oil compounds, including n-alkanes, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and alkylated PAHs, in samples using gas chromatography (GC).
She observed that the magnitude of hydrocarbon depletion was most
influenced by the environment’s hydrographic activity, with high-energy
environments exhibiting significantly higher hydrocarbon depletion than
lower-energy environments. The very-low-energy marsh environment
consistently exhibited high concentrations of the same chemicals that
experienced depletion in other environments over time, suggesting that
oil compounds from sources other than the Deepwater Horizon
incident accumulated into patties, tars, and sediments. Her results
suggest that oil chemicals may be preserved for longer time periods in
low-energy marsh environments than in high-energy environments,
potentially threatening marine organisms and coastal ecosystem health.
“This research can be used to prioritize the type of shorelines we
protect in future oil spills based on how likely they are to retain
toxic compounds over time,” said Meredith. “However, it is important to
recognize that petroleum is a very complex mixture, and traditional
analysis techniques can identify only about 25% of compounds in Deepwater Horizon crude oil.”
Meredith turned her focus to utilizing a unique analysis technique
called ramped pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS)
to improve traditional hydrocarbon analysis. Py-GC-MS uses
high-temperature pyrolysis to extract compounds within different
temperature ranges from samples right before GC analysis without any
sample preparation. “With this technique, we can achieve the same
traditional analysis results while also gaining insight into
high-molecular-weight or polar compounds that are difficult to
identify,” she said. “In particular, we can use the oxygen output in the
high-temperature zone (>370 °C) to estimate concentrations of
oxygenated hydrocarbons, which previous studies suggest might be more
bioavailable to marine species.”
Her Learning
Dr. Liu taught Meredith many scientific principles, but she was most
influenced by his belief that one must always address “what’s new?” and
formulate research questions to yield results that add something to the
scientific community. Networking with other researchers at conferences
and annual GoMRI meetings pushed Meredith to think about her research in
new ways to present her work effectively. “Conferences motivated me to
talk with scientists outside of my usual circle so that I could broaden
my research goals and ideas through collaboration,” she said. “These
connections and experiences, as well as learning under Dr. Liu, afforded
me many benefits that I still reap today.”
Her Future
Meredith is currently a Ph.D. student at the Virginia Institute of
Marine Science researching microplastic pollution. During her DROPPS
research, she became curious about using Py-GC-MS to study microplastic
polymers and found that there are many similarities between plastic and
petroleum pollutants, including complex environmental fates.
She says it is important for students who are pursuing science not to
be shy. Rather than feeling intimidated or being afraid to ask
questions, she found that the best way to learn and grow as a scientist
is to ask about potential opportunities. “The scientific community is
the most supportive working environment I could imagine. Don’t be too
timid to make those connections by asking to collaborate or just asking
for help,” she said. “If you try to get involved with research that
excites you, I guarantee someone will help you get there.”
Praise for Meredith
Dr. Liu described Meredith as one of the top graduate students he has
ever worked with and praised her organization, communication, and
research skills. Liu highlighted Meredith’s ability to communicate
complicated data in simple language, which he finds to be a rare skill
among early-stage graduate students. He believes these skills
contributed to her winning the James D. Watkins Award for Excellence in
Research during the 2016 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science
conference and her invitation to present a GoMRI webinar the same year.
Liu said Meredith made significant contributions to the university’s
broader community impacts when she worked with a K-12 program at Port
Aransas Elementary School. He also praised her work as a summer teaching
assistant, noting that she organized his course’s entire lab component.
“In her teaching experience, Meredith demonstrated superb skills in
organization and great attention to detail, he said. “She clearly is one
of the top TAs I have ever seen, and without her excellent work I would
not have been able to do it!”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Meredith Evans Seeley and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the DROPPS website to learn more about their work.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal published an article that gives
readers a fascinating look at how scientists monitor the heartbeat,
blood flow, and blood pressure of mahi-mahi before and after oil
exposure. Mahi-mahi, an important commercial fisheries species, rely on
strong hearts to swim fast for long periods, and recent studies suggest
that oil can weaken their hearts. A weak heart could lead to them not
getting enough to eat or becoming the meal of a bigger predator.
Read the article Fish Heart Out of Water and meet scientists Rachael Heuer (University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science) and Derek Nelson (University of North Texas) who are figuring out how Deepwater Horizon oil might impact mahi-mahi and other fishes’ health.
Read summaries of recently published papers on fish response to oil exposure:
The GoMRI is a
10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board
makes the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the
intellectual quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the
GoMRI research. All research data, findings and publications will be
made publicly available. The program was established through a $500
million financial commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The deep-pelagic habitat (200 m depth to just above the seabed) is
the largest habitat in the Gulf of Mexico, yet we know very little about
it compared to coastal and shallow-water habitats. Our limited
understanding of this major marine habitat makes it extremely difficult
to assess the effects of disturbances such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Travis Richards
seeks to better understand the structure of deep-pelagic food webs by
tracing the energy flow from the food web base through higher trophic
levels. His research will help expand our understanding of the
deep-pelagic habitat and serve as a reference point for future studies
and response efforts.
Travis discovered his interest in biology through the many scientists
and science educators in his family who exposed him to diverse habitats
and species through frequent camping, fishing, and hiking trips. His
family’s travels took him to sites across the United States, including
several trips to the Gulf of Mexico coastline. During his undergraduate
and graduate career, he explored a variety of marine ecology
opportunities and developed a specialization in marine food webs. He had
just completed an ecology and evolutionary biology master’s degree at
Florida State University when Dr. David Wells
at Texas A&M University at Galveston contacted him about a Ph.D.
student position researching deep-sea food webs. He eagerly accepted and
joined Wells’ lab team working on the DEEPEND project.
Travis explained that the immersive outdoor experiences of his
childhood have become a large part of his identity and are a driving
force behind his research interests. “Those transformative experiences
give conducting research on marine Gulf of Mexico organisms a personal
significance,” he said. “I now have a career pursuing a field that
interested me since childhood and contributing to our understanding of
an ecosystem that played a significant role in my life.”
His Work
Travis helps collect deep-pelagic organisms using a Multiple Opening
and Closing Net with Environmental Sensing System (MOCNESS) that is
towed from surface waters to 1500 m depth. He analyzes natural chemical
tracers called stable isotopes (variants of chemical elements that have a
distinct signature as they transfer from prey to predator) in different
organisms’ muscle tissues to identify their position within the food
web. He can then piece together the food web’s structure to trace the
initial food source and document the natural flow of energy through the
food web.
Travis will use the data to describe variation in food web structure,
identify the number of deep-pelagic trophic groups with different
functions, and determine how much deep-pelagic organisms contribute to
the diets of demersal (near the seabed) and epipelagic (surface to 200 m
depth) predators. So far, Travis has observed that deep-pelagic food
webs are more complex and nuanced than researchers have previously
thought. His preliminary results indicate that the food web’s structure
varies both seasonally and across horizontal and vertical spatial
scales. Researchers can use this information to make better predictions
about the ways that removal of targeted species by fisheries or
disturbances such as oil spills will affect the food web and the greater
pelagic ecosystem.
His Learning
Travis has learned that productivity matters to success in academia.
One must always make progress on some aspect of their research, and
there is always a paper that needs work or an experiment that can be set
up. He said that seeing the contributions of one’s research is a
motivating reward for the hard work. “I’m continually impressed with the
research being conducted within the different GoMRI funded projects.
When you attend a GoMRI meeting, you get a real sense for how much we’re
learning about the Gulf of Mexico. It’s exciting to know that our work
is contributing to a new and more complete understanding of the Gulf.”
One of Travis’s most memorable experiences working with the DEEPEND
consortium is conducting field work – a rare opportunity due to the
challenging logistics and expensive nature of deep-sea sampling. “You
never know what you’ll bring up in the nets,” he said. “With each
research cruise, I’ve been able to see incredibly unique organisms, such
as anglerfishes, lanternfishes, and cephalopods, that I never imagined
I’d get to see in person.”
His Future
Travis hopes to conduct research as a post-doc and eventually take a
position at a liberal arts college teaching and leading a small research
program. He advises that students considering a scientific career take
advantage of every research opportunity available to them, even those
not focused on their exact interests. “Do the best possible work you can
at each position you take,” he said. “Once you demonstrate your ability
to perform well at a variety of positions, more opportunities will
start to open up for you.”
Praise for Travis
Dr. Wells commended Travis’ commitment to leading the deep-sea
trophic ecology component of the project’s research, noting that he
often puts in extra time to make his research responsibilities his
primary task. “He is always willing to participate on cruises and be
involved in meetings and present his results,” said Wells. “He recently
published his first dissertation chapter in ICES Journal of Marine Science
(Trophic Ecology of Meso- and Bathypelagic Predators in the Gulf of
Mexico) and is clearly on track to do great things with his project.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Travis Richards and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the DEEPEND website to learn more about their work.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Have you ever wondered how scientists ‘see’ under water? The Gulf of
Mexico Research Initiative is pleased to announce a new Sea Grant
publication about the technology scientists use to look at and study the
deep ocean, specifically manned and unmanned vehicles.
Scientists have used remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), autonomous
underwater vehicles (AUVs), and submarines, including human-occupied
vehicles, to locate Deepwater Horizon oil and monitor its impacts below the water’s surface and on the seafloor.
Read Underwater Vehicles Used to Study Oil Spills to learn about how these underwater robotic devices work and how researchers have used them in the Gulf of Mexico. Included is a chart that gives the cost of use, type of use, advantages, and disadvantages for each of these technologies.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team synthesizes
peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general audiences,
particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast. Sea Grant
offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently-held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
************
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Gulf of Mexico is one of four “super-diverse” ecoregions in the
world; yet, we don’t know much about how its deep environment changed
after Deepwater Horizon because very little was known about it
before the spill. Since the spill, the data about deep-ocean life are
growing as scientists with the DEEPEND research consortium study the
deep Gulf’s organisms and processes. Their findings will help develop a
baseline to monitor future changes.
Master’s-level graduate students working alongside DEEPEND scientists are writing a weekly blog series
about their research contributions. “When these disasters occur, the
deep sea is not often thought of – it is kind of an out of sight, out of
mind situation,” said student Devan Nichols. “The deep sea is a
mysterious place, and scientists still have a lot to learn about its
complexity and the organisms found there.”
Here are some deep-ocean research areas that these students have
written about, which can help inform management decisions to predict,
protect, and increase recruitment for future populations.
Gulf Shrimp
Devan Nichols, Richard Hartland, Ronald Sieber, and Nathan LaSpina
at Nova Southeastern University are studying potential impacts to Gulf
shrimp (family Oplophoridae, family Sergestidae, family Euphausiidae and
family Benthesicymidae). They are examining data collected in 2011,
comparing them to data collected in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and
identifying changes in abundance, biomass (weight), and vertical
migrations.
The data are beginning to show a sharp decrease in abundance between
2011 and 2015 – 2017 and that the warm water input from the Loop Current
may affect abundance. Further analyses are required to verify if the
Current affects migration habits.
Young Fish
Corinne Meinert (Texas A&M University at Galveston), Sebastian Velez (Florida Atlantic University), and Nina Pruzinsky
(Nova Southeastern University) are researching the biodiversity,
dispersal processes, and spatial distribution of early life stage
fishes.
Meinert uses genetic methods to analyze oceanic ichthyoplankton –
fish eggs and larval fishes that drift in ocean currents – and learn
about their biodiversity and population dynamics. This information gives
insight into the status of the oceanic environment, since higher fish
diversity typically indicates a healthier ecosystem.
Velez focuses on larvae from nearshore species (snappers and
groupers) that utilize offshore habitats (up to 1,500 m depth). He
observed strong biodiversity in these expatriates and found that some
species, such as the Wenchman snapper, have the ability to stall their
settlement, likely in search of a suitable habitat. “When you walk into a
restaurant and order sushi or a fish dinner […] the odds against a
particular animal making it to a harvestable size are astounding,” said
Velez. “These fishes [often] represent multi-million dollar industries
in the form of commercial and recreational fisheries. Understanding the
biology and life history of [these] species is imperative in informing
future management decisions.”
Pruzinsky studies the spatiotemporal distributions of early life
stage tuna to learn about their habitat preferences and help compile key
identification features for juvenile tuna species. These features
include pigmentation patterns, body shape, ratios of different body
parts, and fin ray counts. She developed high-resolution models of
larval and juvenile tuna distributions as a function of habitat. These
models represent some of the first for juvenile tunas (as opposed to the
better-known larvae and adults).
Adult Fishes
Characterizing the behaviors and distribution of deep-sea fishes is a major focus of DEEPEND. Rich Jones
at Florida Atlantic University is researching the important but poorly
known fish family Paralepididae (barracudina), whose unique
bioluminescence is derived from liver tissues. Using data from large
pelagic trawls (NRDA ONSAP sampling), he observed that barracudina
actively avoid smaller, research-sized nets, suggesting that we have
probably underestimated their abundances and importance historically. He
also noted distinct differences in diet and water column distribution
between barracudina species.
Nova Southeastern University student Kristian Ramkissoon researches the composition, abundance, and vertical distribution of the bristlemouth fish genus Cyclothone,
the most abundant vertebrate on the planet. He has observed that these
fishes do not vertically migrate, but instead occupy relatively
predictable and distinct depth ranges. He is attempting to assess the
impact of hydrographic features such as the Loop Current and its eddies
on Cyclothone distribution.
Fellow Nova student Natalie Slayden
studies otoliths – ear stones whose rings represent a fish’s age. She
plans to describe and correlate otolith ring patterns with the fish’s
life history and estimate the ages of various mesopelagic and
bathypelagic fishes, most for the first time.
Max Weber
at Texas A&M University at Galveston uses genetic methods to
investigate if population size fluctuations in deep-sea fishes mirror
those of coastal species. Stable populations reflect a stable
environment, yet Max’s preliminary analyses reveal population declines
and expansions that indicate the environment is more volatile than
previously assumed.
Eating Habits
Three Nova Southeastern University students analyze fish gut contents as part of their focus on food webs. Mike Novotny
is researching bathypelagic fishes called “Tubeshoulders” (family
Platytroctidae) to explore their feeding behaviors and prey preferences –
the first known study into the diet of this important family. He
observed that these creatures are zooplanktivores that feed on
gelatinous animals (e.g., jellyfishes and relatives), something not
previously known.
Ryan Bos
focuses on fish and shrimp ingestion of microplastics (ranging 1 μm –
<5 mm), which can cause false feelings of fullness, obstruct feeding
appendages, decrease reproductive fitness, and premature death. He
identified microplastics (which burn, melt, curl up, or repel when
touched with a hot needle) and observed that nearly one-third of the
fishes and crustaceans tested ingested at least one piece of plastic.
These findings highlight the ubiquitous influence of anthropogenic
pollutants in the deep ocean.
Matt Woodstock
is studying mesopelagic fishes to better understand the ecology of
endoparasites, which live within another organism (a host) and travel
through the food web to complete their life cycles. The presence of many
different parasites suggests that the fish’s diet may have shifted over
time or may come from many different prey. These results will help
researchers make conclusions about the connectivity and stability of
different ecosystems.
Rare Finds
Many of the students’ research projects focus on little-studied Gulf
of Mexico organisms and processes and are the first studies of their
kind. For example, three of the nineteen barracudina species captured
for Jones’s research represent the first records of those species, and
Woodstock is the first person to record parasites within the species he
studies.
“Some of the fishes we have identified have only been seen by a
handful of people before in oceanographic history,” said Rich Jones.
“The opportunity to study the habits of these rare animals with a
comprehensive suite of data, let alone hold them in your hand, is a
unique pleasure of working with DEEPEND.”
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal published an interactive tool featuring maps and graphics showing where Deepwater Horizon
oil traveled. The story map also includes locations for where
responders applied chemical dispersants on the Gulf’s surface and other
sources where oil enters the Gulf, such as offshore oil and gas
platforms and natural seeps.
Try out the story map Where Did the Oil Go in the Gulf of Mexico? Ocean Portal developed this research-based tool using data from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative (GRIIDC), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Environmental Response Management Applications (ERMA), the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and others.
Learn more about the oil spill and how it traveled:
The GoMRI is a
10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board
makes the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the
intellectual quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the
GoMRI research. All research data, findings and publications will be
made publicly available. The program was established through a $500
million financial commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team released a publication that provides helpful tips for what to do if you come upon an oiled animal in the wild, including phone numbers for state-level animal-specific rescue authorities. Since even a small oil spill or leak can put certain migratory marine animals at risk for oil exposure, people working and playing along the coast might run across an affected bird, dolphin, whale, or sea turtle that move through a wide range of habitats.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team
synthesizes peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general
audiences, particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast.
Sea Grant offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United
States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently-held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
************
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Laboratory studies at the University of Miami suggest that exposure to Deepwater Horizon oil may have negatively affected heart function in mahi-mahi, reducing their ability to swim efficiently. Lela Schlenker
is expanding that research to investigate if and how oil exposure
alters the way mahi-mahi migrate and respond to predators and prey in
the wild. She conducts her research using different approaches: one
focusing on mahi-mahi’s ability to smell and another that uses satellite
tagging to monitor mahi-mahi’s behavior after encountering oil.
Lela is a Ph.D. student with the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and a GoMRI Scholar with RECOVER.
Her Path
Lela began her environmental undergraduate studies at Smith College
but wasn’t sure if she felt more drawn to terrestrial biology or marine
science. A study-away maritime science program with the Williams-Mystic
Program gave her the opportunity to experience marine science hands-on
and inspired her to continue on that path. She designed an independent
project for the course that involved collecting samples aboard a
commercial fishing vessel. “It was an eye-opening experience to see all
the amazing critters that we were catching and getting to talk to
fishermen who have an incredible knowledge base and skillset. The
intersection of the biological and human aspects of the fishing really
struck me,” said Lela.
The experience inspired Lela to pursue various fisheries-based jobs
after completing her undergraduate degree. One of these jobs brought her
to the Dauphin Island Sea Lab just months after the Deepwater Horizon
incident occurred. Seeing the spill’s initial effects first-hand
inspired her to someday explore the oil’s impacts on Gulf ecology and
fishing communities. While completing a master’s degree in fisheries
science at the College of William and Mary, she learned about Dr. Martin Grosell’s
mahi-mahi research at the University of Miami and contacted him about a
possible student research position. Grosell thought Lela would be a
good fit for his lab; however, he couldn’t hire her unless his proposed
RECOVER project received GoMRI funding.
“Whether or not I could come to Rosenstiel and do my Ph.D. completely
hinged on that grant,” said Lela. “I got an email from him right after
the grant came in asking me to come for an interview. I wouldn’t be here
if it weren’t for GoMRI funding. GoMRI has been instrumental in my
career – having funding like this is a really rare and exciting
opportunity!”
Her Work
Lela assesses how oil exposure affects mahi-mahi’s ability to smell
using an electro-olfactogram. She sedates the fish and removes a thin
layer of skin from the nostril (septum) to uncover the olfactory rosette
– finger-like projections covered in neurons. The fish is fitted with
highly conductive electrodes that attach to the animal’s skin and on the
rosette. She then delivers seawater with different scents (unscented,
prey-scented, and predator-scented) directly to the rosette and measures
voltage changes in the neurons in response to each smell. Greater
changes in voltage indicate a stronger neurological response and,
therefore, a stronger ability to detect the scent. She then dilutes the
scent incrementally to determine how faint the smell must be before the
fish can no longer detect it.
The next phase of Lela’s olfactory research will expose mahi-mahi to
oil and observe if and how their sense of smell changes compared to
control fish. A diminished ability to track prey and sense predators via
smell could have significant implications for the fish’s survival,
migration patterns, and spawning behavior.
Lela will also be conducting satellite tagging experiments that build upon previous tagging field experiments.
This summer, her team will capture wild mahi-mahi, rest them in water
tanks containing seawater or seawater plus oil, fit the fish with
satellite-enabled tags, and release them from the same location. The
tags will relay temperature, depth, light level, and location
information back to the researchers, who will use it to identify
differences in swimming speed, spawning behavior, and migration patterns
between the control and oil-exposed fish. “Our tagging research will
help us understand how [previous findings that oil affects mahi-mahi
physiology] would manifest in the wild and, if the fish were exposed to
oil during a spill, how they would cope and what recovery may or may not
look like,” she said.
Her Learning
The greatest lesson that Lela has learned working alongside Grosell
is the importance of being an optimist and making bold choices. Previous
studies documenting mahi-mahi behavior experienced many challenges from
limited resources to difficulties handling and tagging the wild fish,
something Lela was aware of when her team’s research began. She was
inspired by Grosell’s determination to improve the research methods to
collect better data and include oil as an additional variable. “It was a
little scary when he told me we were going to take this thing that no
one else has been able to do and then make it harder by adding the oil,”
said Lela. “It was a good lesson that sometimes you just have to be
bold and go for it and if you can figure out a way to make it happen,
then you’re going to conduct exciting research that no one else has been
able to do.”
Her Future
Lela hopes to continue working in a collaborative research
environment after graduation, particularly in a position that also
allows her to teach and spark the passion she feels for science in
others. She advises students considering a scientific career to explore
different avenues before entering graduate school to help solidify which
aspects of science they want to pursue. “Taking the time to do
different jobs and figure out exactly what you like about scientific
research can be really helpful,” said Lela. “It’s not bad to try a lot
of different things, especially when you’re in college or right out of
college. There’s a lot of different experiences out there, and you never
really know where things will lead.”
Praise for Lela
Dr. Grosell commended Lela’s unique dissertation research, which
spans several levels of biological organization and offers a refreshing,
integrative view of oil impacts on large marine pelagic organisms. He
added that she previously led a research cruise and will act as lead
scientist for an upcoming cruise in the Gulf of Mexico this summer. “As
lead scientist, Lela demonstrates a rare talent for leadership and
pursuing challenging directions while promoting a supportive and
collegial atmosphere,” said Grosell. “I am grateful to have Lela in my
group and continue to learn from her.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Lela Schlenker and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the RECOVER website to learn more about their work.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, the consortium highlighted the efforts of Gulf Coast teachers who have accompanied Mud & Blood expeditions, gaining hands-on experience dissecting fish and processing sediment cores.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team released a publication that explains the role that microbes play in using oil as an energy source and removing it from the environment.
The 8-page brochure Microbes and oil: What’s the connection? describes how these microscopic organisms can have a large-scale effect by quickly degrading oil in water and how different factors influence the rate that oil is broken down. It also describes how the microbes’ behavior can differ depending on their species, the type of oil they encounter, and the place they live in the marine environment. Included in the publication is what scientists are learning about how man-made response efforts such as chemical dispersants affect microbial oil degradation.
The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Team
synthesizes peer-reviewed science for a broad range of general
audiences, particularly those who live and work across the Gulf Coast.
Sea Grant offers oil-spill related public seminars across the United
States.
Information about upcoming Sea Grant science seminars and recently-held events is available here. To receive email updates about seminars, publications, and the outreach team, click here.
************
GoMRI and the Sea Grant programs of the Gulf of Mexico (Florida,
Mississippi-Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) have partnered to create an oil spill science outreach program.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is
a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect,
and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the
environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
“Drifting in the Gulf” is an entertaining, educational video about the process of designing new scientific equipment for studying ocean surface currents. Co-created by Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE) and Waterlust, the video features the CARTHE drifter designed by University of Miami scientists, who spent two years testing various structures and materials before finalizing the design for the first environmentally friendly drifter made from 85 percent seawater biodegradable components. “Drifting in the Gulf” was awarded first place in the Ocean 180 Video Challenge, judged by 21,000 middle school students in over 900 classrooms around the world.
“While the video is sometimes silly, it is packed with information about ocean currents, technology, and environmental sustainability. Most importantly, it has a message of dedication and perseverance.” — CARTHE Outreach Coordinator Laura Bracken
An open-access article recently published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology details the development process depicted in “Drifting in the Gulf.” The article information and PDF is available here.
Jewels of the Gulf is a 16-minute documentary highlighting research into Deepwater Horizon’s continued impacts on deep-sea corals.
Background: On April 20th 2010, approximately 50 miles from the Louisiana coastline, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig experienced a catastrophic failure that resulted in the largest marine oil spill in history. Over the course of 87 days, an estimated 210 million gallons of oil surged into the Gulf of Mexico from a wellhead nearly one mile beneath the surface. Images in the media portrayed the dire consequences to human lives and livelihoods, animals, and shorelines. But there are impacts that the media didn’t cover — the impacts of the spill on the deepwater ecosystems of the Gulf. Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf (ECOGIG) consortium scientists are documenting the continued impacts of the accident on the unique and beautiful deep sea corals that form the basis of diverse biological communities deep beneath the Gulf’s surface.
The Research: The Jewels of the Gulf research cruise was a 12-day expedition assessing the effects of oil, methane, and chemical dispersants on deep-sea corals. Remotely operated vehicles at over 1000 meters depth captured hundreds of high-resolution still images of corals that the researchers have been monitoring since 2010. The researchers analyzed the images and compared them to those from previous expeditions to document the spill’s impacts and assess the coral’s post-spill recovery and survival. The team, led by Dr. Iliana Baums from Pennsylvania State University, collected both high-resolution images of the corals to document changes over time and live coral samples to study back in the lab. During the expedition, a live ROV camera feed was broadcast so the public could view what the scientists were seeing in real time. To learn more about the Jewels of the Gulf expedition, meet the scientists, and more, visit ECOGIG’s Cruise Blogs here.
Prior to the release of the full-length documentary, ECOGIG released three short videos using footage from the expedition that focused on different aspects of coral research.
Part 1: What is a Deep-Sea Coral?
Thousands of meters beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, ECOGIG scientists study the ecology of deep sea corals living on the seafloor. What is a deep sea coral? How do they nourish themselves in the darkness? What makes them unique?
Part 2: How Do Scientists Study Deep-Sea Corals?
ECOGIG scientists use remotely operated vehicles and high-resolution camera equipment to study deep sea ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico.
Part 3: Why Study Deep-Sea Corals?
A better understanding of deep sea corals in the Gulf of Mexico will advance our knowledge of deep sea ecosystems as well as guide management decisions in response to future disturbances.
Dr. Kait Frasier recently appeared on the show to discuss how she uses marine mammal sounds to determine which species were present during the Deepwater Horizon spill and how they are functioning in their habitat present-day.
Episode Summary (via Dispatches from the Gulf on Soundcloud): “Dr. Kait Frasier (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) is a pioneer in bioacoustics. She’s part of a research team that is studying how Gulf dolphins and whales are faring since Deepwater Horizon by examining the sounds and calls they make. Using more than six years of underwater recordings, she tracks which species were present at the time of the spill and how they are functioning in their habitat in the present day.”
Oil contains thousands of different compounds that each affect the
environment and living organisms differently. While some compounds have
been well-studied, there are exponentially more that have not. Rebecca Lichtler
conducts toxicity, gene expression, and gene mutation studies on
oil-exposed mammal cells to determine if and how different oil compounds
affect cell health.
Rebecca’s parents are scientists who sparked her early curiosity about scientific research. She began her journey as an undergraduate student at Tulane University studying cell and molecular biology, but felt like something was missing. Hoping to get involved in science that had a deeper connection to human health, she switched to the university’s public health program and changed her minor to cell and molecular biology. During a foundations course in environmental health, Rebecca met Dr. Jeffrey Wickliffe and took an undergraduate research position in his lab. As she neared graduation, Wickliffe invited her to apply for a doctoral student position in his lab conducting GoMRI-funded research, which she did after entering the School of Public Health’s environmental health sciences program.
“Of all the undergraduates that I’ve had experience with, Rebecca was far and away the most dedicated,” recalls Wickliffe. “I don’t think this department has ever had a Ph.D. student come straight out of an undergraduate program, but she’s probably one of the top Ph.D. students we have in the department right now. It has set the bar so that other [professors] might be less averse to taking on Ph.D. students coming directly from undergraduate studies.”
Her Work
Rebecca conducts oil exposure experiments on mouse lung cells, which
represent a common route of exposure (respiration), and on liver cells,
the organ most associated with metabolizing toxic chemicals. She uses
three methods to analyze different polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
(PAHs) and determine the most effective and efficient techniques for
quantifying toxicity. “We’re trying find a balance between convenience
and accuracy. Convenience is important because we get the information in
a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable amount of money, but we
also need that information to be as reliable and detailed as possible,”
said Rebecca. “If an oil spill happens we can take a sample of the oil,
break down the compounds, and know which ones are the most toxic that we
need to worry about.”
The first approach uses a cytotoxicity test to determine how
different compounds affect the cells’ ability to grow and survive after
exposure. She exposes the cells to individual compounds for 6 hours
followed by a 72-hour recovery period. Then she treats the cells with a
pink fluorescent dye (sulforhodamine B) and uses a spectrophotometer to
determine the amount of fluorescence. The proportion of color
corresponds to healthy cells, which will have more color than cells
whose growth was slowed or stopped by PAH exposure. She compares results
between treatments to determine each tested compound’s relative
toxicity.
The second approach uses a gene expression test to measure toxicity.
Certain genes that metabolize toxic compounds (CYP1A1 and CYP1B1) are
known to be upregulated, or more expressed, when cells are exposed to
PAHs. Rebecca isolates the cells’ RNA (the expressed part of the DNA)
and uses quantitative polymerase chain reaction to detect if CYP1A1 and
CYP1B1 expression is increased after PAH exposure, which would indicate
that exposure was significant enough to trigger the upregulation.
The third method involves genetic mutation assays, which require that
cells recover for one week after exposure to allow mutations to become
apparent. Lipids and proteins that appear on the cell surface make up
the cells’ membrane. However, if the gene producing that protein is
mutated, the proteins will not appear. Rebecca treats exposed cells with
antibodies that “stain” protein markers and make them detectable using a
flow cytometer. The more cells that lack a protein marker, the more
mutagenic effects the PAH compound had on the cells. She plans to
compare these results to the cytotoxicity results to determine if the
number of mutations correlate with the growth inhibitions observed in
her cytotoxicity studies.
The mutation assays are still in their early stages, but Rebecca is
already seeing interesting results. The cytotoxicity experiments
revealed a wide variation of toxicity and identified the oil compounds
with a greater toxic effect than other compounds. However, the gene
expression tests did not show those significant differences in toxicity.
“The degree of upregulation does not significantly vary between
compounds, regardless of their toxicity,” explained Rebecca. “This
suggests that the gene expression test may not be a useful tool to
determine the extent of toxicity.”
Rebecca hopes that her research will help identify which compounds
will have the most significant human health impacts. “Being in New
Orleans surrounded by so many people that are involved with the Gulf
day-to-day and meeting people whose lives were affected after the spill
has shown me how important this work is to people’s everyday lives,”
she said. “It’s the whole reason I got into this field and makes my work
really gratifying.”
Her Learning
One of Rebecca’s most valuable experiences working in Wickliffe’s lab
has been to expand her own learning by teaching others. Their lab often
includes inexperienced undergraduate researchers, and Rebecca finds
that teaching them forces her to confront her own understanding of the
techniques and conceptual framework. “If you can’t answer someone else’s
question, then you don’t know it well enough yourself,” she said. “For
me, the most helpful way of learning is actually teaching!”
Her Future
Rebecca hopes to continue working in research, perhaps in a post-doc
position, and eventually become a professor with her own lab. She says
that students interested in a scientific career should get involved in
labs as early as possible. “A lot of students think that they have to
work in a lab for free just to get any experience, but there are many
supported positions available, even if it’s not in your dream field,”
she said. “I’ve learned something from every lab I’ve been in even if it
didn’t necessarily have to do with environmental health, whether it’s a
technique or a way of thinking or a concept. Don’t stress if it’s not
your dream topic – you’re going to learn something.”
Praise for Rebecca
Dr. Wickliffe describes Rebecca as a talented researcher who is able
to quickly master difficult methods and protocols, pays attention to
detail, and fosters a solid understanding of experimental design. “She
knows when to use positive and negative controls, and she’s not averse
to repeating experiments to verify and validate her findings.” He also
praised her collaborative skills, highlighting her ability to offer
constructive feedback to others while absorbing and valuing others’
opinions about her own work.
Dr. Charles Miller,
the project’s principal investigator, describes her as one of their
department’s most promising students, noting her strong work ethic such
as working on a task before it has been assigned and eagerly accepting
new ones. “She has a mix of the right personality traits to be a good
scientist. I’ve seen her progress in learning to think critically about
problems, ask the right questions, and formulate a plan to approach
those questions,” he said. “People with all the right signs come along
every now and then, and it’s like a nugget of gold when you find one.
Anybody would be lucky to have her working in their lab.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Rebecca Lichtler and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
Responders to the Deepwater Horizon incident applied
unprecedented amounts of chemical dispersant on the surface oil slick
and into the deep underwater plume forming from the riser pipe. Shortly
thereafter, researchers observed that a brown flocculant material
containing oil and dispersant components covered some deep-sea corals
near the incident site. Danielle DeLeo,
during her graduate research, investigated oil and dispersant’s overall
toxicity on deep-sea corals and assessed genetic changes that might
help explain the resulting impacts.
Danielle fell in love with the ocean at a young age despite road
blocks she faced in her local school system. Growing up, she attended
schools with weak STEM programs and faced resistance from educators when
she expressed interest in the sciences. “As a female, my advisors never
encouraged me to pursue a major in STEM fields and, in some cases, made
me think I couldn’t hack it,” she explained. “Even so, I found a way to
turn my interests into a career that I love and became a
first-generation college graduate.”
She discovered her interest in deep-sea ecosystems as an undergraduate student at Penn State University. While working in Dr. Charles Fisher’s lab, Danielle assisted graduate students and researchers with preparations for a rapid response cruise that surveyed the Deepwater Horizon incident’s
initial effects on Gulf of Mexico coral communities. “Learning about
deep-sea habitats and the various ways in which scientists explore and
sample these environments was an eye-opening experience for me,” she
said. “I became passionate about studying the oil spill’s anthropogenic
impacts on deep-water coral communities.” Danielle completed her Ph.D.
research with Dr. Erik Cordes
at Temple University, where she worked as a member of the ECOGIG
consortium that investigates impacts from oil spills and other stressors
on deep-sea corals.
Her Work
Danielle conducted exposure experiments
with coral fragments for 96 hours using treatments of oil, dispersant,
and an oil-dispersant mixture. “We have no idea what actual oil and
dispersant concentrations the corals were exposed to in situ or
for what duration,” she explained. “Instead, we know what the resulting
damage or impacts looked like. Therefore, we tested a variety of
concentrations and oil-water-dispersant mixtures to see what the overall
toxicity of each was and what chemicals and/or combinations would cause
the lethality and damage we observed in situ. We chose a range of exposure concentrations for our experiments based preliminary testing to examine mortality rates.”
She conducted two exposure series. One series used whole chemical
mixtures of dissolved and undissolved portions of oil and dispersant
(high concentration 25 ppm, medium 7.9 ppm, low 0.8 ppm). The other
series used only dissolved water-accommodated fractions (based on the
highest oil concentrations detected during the spill ~300 μM to find
lethal doses, as none of the bulk-oil concentrations proved to be
lethal). Initial total hydrocarbon concentrations were high 250 μM,
medium 150 μM, and low 50 μM; and initial total dispersant
concentrations were high 176.7 mg/L, medium 106.0 mg/L, and low 35.3
mg/L.
Danielle examined changes in the coral’s gene expression after
exposure using high-throughput RNA sequencing and transcriptomics. She
focused her analyses on exploring genome-wide effects underlying the
stress responses observed in floc-exposed corals, such as polyp coiling
or death, excess mucous production, damaged tissue, and exoskeletons.
Danielle observed that, at similar concentrations to the oil,
dispersant-only treatments appeared most toxic to deep-sea corals
followed by oil-dispersant mixtures and then oil alone. Dispersants
caused an overall decline in coral health and exacerbated the lethality
of oil exposure. Oil and dispersant exposures also activated the corals’
immune responses and wound-repair mechanisms, suggesting that the
corals may have been able to partially survive short-term exposures if
the technology and methodology to limit initial exposure periods at
depth existed. Her findings support a growing body of research that
suggests deep-sea dispersant applications may have had some unintended
consequences as it relates to soft coral communities. This reinforces
the need for exploring new response efforts and technology in the event
of future deep-water oil spills.
“These consequences are extremely important to consider for future
oil spill clean-up efforts in deep waters,” she said. “The gene
expression studies for in situ impacted corals reveal some of
the molecular-level impacts that manifested into the physical damage
observed at oil-impacted deep-water coral sites, while also elucidating
their recovery potential.”
Her Learning
Working with Dr. Cordes, Danielle conducted research aboard different
vessels, handled and cared for deep-sea specimens, and assisted with
collections using remotely operated vehicles and the deep submergence
vehicle Alvin. Her work provided many life-changing experiences that
reinforced her passion for deep-sea research. She said, “I was extremely
lucky to have the opportunity to dive in Alvin twice at deep Gulf of
Mexico sites to collect samples for my dissertation research. It was an
experience that I will always cherish.”
Her Future
Danielle began a post-doctoral position in 2016 with Dr. Heather Bracken-Grissom
at Florida International University exploring the evolution of
bioluminescence in deep-sea crustaceans. Now she applies the skills and
methods she learned to answer new questions about deep-sea
invertebrates.
She advises science-interested students to explore their interests,
take risks, and seek out classes or workshops to help narrow their
interests. “As a city kid, I never imagined I would end up becoming a
marine biologist studying the deep sea,” she said. “Seek out mentors who
encourage and inspire you as well as opportunities working or
volunteering in labs or in the field. It could change your life’s path –
it did for me!”
Praise for Danielle
Dr. Cordes said that Danielle continuously impressed him during her
time at Temple University. “She took on many challenges and, through her
development of bioinformatics tools, took our research in directions
that wouldn’t have been possible before. I look forward to seeing where
her career will take her and furthering our collaboration in the
future.”
The GoMRI community embraces bright and dedicated students like Danielle DeLeo and their important contributions. The GoMRI Scholars Program recognizes
graduate students whose work focuses on GoMRI-funded projects and
builds community for the next generation of ocean science professionals.
Visit the ECOGIG website to learn more about their work.
************
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
is a 10-year independent research program established to study the
effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on
the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill
mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation
technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes
the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual
quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research.
All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly
available. The program was established through a $500 million financial
commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.