UMCES-led Research Team Investigates Oil Spill’s Impact on Gulf of Mexico
Just after midnight on September 1, an UMCES-led research team departed Cocodrie, Louisiana aboard the R/V Pelican on a week-long research expedition to determine the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill on the Gulf of Mexico. The expedition, funded by a National Science Foundation Rapid Research award, will collect data on fish populations and water quality in the Northern Gulf of Mexico from the Texas coast to Louisiana.
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The deck of the R/V Pelican as she transits the northern Gulf of Mexico. Image credit: Oregon State University |
While the collection of new data is critical to determining the spill’s impact on aquatic life, the foundation of this expedition began seven years ago. Supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UMCES team has conducted five summer research cruises in the northern Gulf of Mexico since 2003, using high-resolution sampling to determine how zooplankton and fish populations relate to physical structure and water quality. In short, the team has developed one of the most comprehensive, data sets on temperature, salinity, oxygen, phytoplankton, zooplankton and fish in the northern Gulf of Mexico. When combined from data collected on this cruise, the team hopes to be able to see how this has changed the pelagic ecosystem of the post-spill northern Gulf of Mexico.
While at sea, the team will be posting daily journal entries and images on its Life in the Dead Zone blog, and UMCES will share their experiences on Twitter. Researchers from Oregon State University will be blogging as well.
Throughout the cruise, the team will use similar techniques to those used in their previous Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay research. They will deploy a towable water quality monitoring device called a Scanfish that cycles up and down in the water column with sensors that measure temperature, salinity, oxygen and small animals – zooplankton which form the base of the food web. For the Gulf trip, the team has modified the Scanfish with sensors that monitor the presence of oil. They will also analyze water samples taken at several fixed monitoring sites along the way, and use acoustical samplers to assess resident fish populations.
The expedition is led by Horn Point Laboratory Director Dr. Mike Roman and includes HPL faculty members Drs. Bill Boicourt and Jamie Pierson. Several Horn Point research technicians will round out the UMCES team, including Ali Barba, Carole Derry and Tom Wazniak. Researchers from Oregon State University, the University of Akron and the Dauphin Island Sea Lab are aboard the R/V Pelican as well. Aboard the R/V Oceanus, a companion research vessel following the Pelican, UMCES techincian Ginger Jahn is working with scientists from NOAA, East Carolina University, University of Michigan and Louisiana State University to collect additonal data.
UMCES Horn Point Laboratory researchers prepare for their September 2010 Gulf of Mexico research expedition.
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