Oregon Sea Grant

Spatially-explicit, High-resolution Mapping and Modeling to Quantify Hypoxia and Oil Effects on the Living Resources of the Northern Gulf of Mexico

Stephen Brandt, Director, Oregon Sea Grant and collaborators from the University of Maryland and Eastern Carolina University (Funding: National Science Foundation).

Dr. Brandt and long-time research collaborators from the University of Maryland and Eastern Carolina University received a $200,000 NSF "rapid response" grant to support a week-long research cruise in September 2010 to collect data about the conditions of fish in the northern Gulf in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that spring.

The new information is being compared with baseline data Dr. Brandt and his team have recorded in multiple cruises of the same region dating back to 2003 in NOAA-funded research into the effects of hypoxia on Gulf of Mexico ecosystems. The goal is to determine how the spill affected - and continues to affect - marine life in the Gulf.

Learn more:

• OSU Scientist part of team assessing fish health after Gulf oil spill (OSU News & Research communications)
• Macondo-1 well oil-derived polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in mesozooplankton from the northern Gulf of Mexico. S. Mitra, S.B. Brandt, et al. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 39. 2012.