• Alan Hart, Continental Shelf Associates
• Stephen Howden, University of Southern Mississippi
• Pat Hogan, Naval Research Laboratory
• Charlene Bohanon, Galveston Bay Foundation
• Jan van Smirren, BMT Group

• Tony Knap, Texas A&M University
• Ruth Mullins-Perry, Shell Upstream Americas

The NOAA-led U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®), in partnership with The Maritime Alliance and ERISS Corporation, has issued the first national-level assessment of the scale and scope of the "ocean enterprise." The new study shows that the ocean enterprise, the for-profit and not-for-profit firms that support ocean measurement, observation and forecasting, accounts for $7 billion dollars of the U.S. economy annually and provides up to 30,000 jobs.

Fully implemented, an IFCB network could expand HAB early warning to other parts of the Texas coast and to other Gulf of Mexico states. Further, the resulting expanded access to continuous plankton monitoring data can enable development of adaptive solutions to manage anticipated future impacts on coastal resources from rising temperatures, more frequent tropical storms, expanded aquaculture operations, and potential for introduction of invasive species via ballast water discharge.

The University of South Florida's College of Marine Science has released its winter edition of Rising Tides magazine. This edition's science article is "Revealing the Hidden Lives of Fish."

 

Dr. Jordon Beckler has been promoted to manager of the Ocean Technology Research Program at Mote Marine Laboratory, in Sarasota, Fla.

The program develops and deploys technology for multiple research programs and distributes the information through Mote's Southern Operations - Coastal Ocean Observing Laboratory (SO-COOL) and GCOOS.

	Gulf sediment-dwelling worm Streblospio gynobranchiata.

Ocean hypoxia and rising temperatures due to climate change are hot topics in any discussion of current challenges facing the marine environment. Ecologist Chet Rakocinski, a professor at The University of Southern Mississippi's (USM) Gulf Coast Research Lab (GCRL), is leading a team of graduate students and interns in an investigation of how benthic polychaetes, small organisms that live within bottom sediments, cope with these two stressors.

The natural resource trustees -- representatives from Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, NOAA, DOI, USDA, and EPA -- have proposed to accept the $8.1 billion settlement from BP to resolve their liability for natural resource injuries stemming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

 

The 30-day waiting period for the acceptance of the Deepwater Horizon settlement ends on March 21.

 

As a next step in this process, a final version of a comprehensive programmatic assessment and restoration plan and programmatic EIS for the Gulf of Mexico, incorporating public comment received in late 2015, has been released. This plan would allocate funds from the settlement over the next 15 years.

 

In October 2015, the trustees released the Draft Programmatic Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan and Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, which included an assessment of impacts of the spill and identified the types of restoration needed to compensate the public for these impacts. More than 6,300 public comments were submitted on the document over a 60-day period and were all considered in the final document.

The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) will be hosting the worldwide premier of Dispatches from the Gulf: Six Years After the Largest Oil Spill in U.S. History. The film, by Marilyn and Hal Weiner, is narrated by Matt Damon and is the 14th episode in the award-winning television series Journey to Planet Earth. The film investigates the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and features teams of scientists exploring the oil spill's effect on the Gulf. Their collective studies have become the largest coordinated oceanographic research endeavor in history. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A moderated by Dr. Kirk Johnson, The Sant Director of the National Museum of Natural History. The event is sponsored by the NMNH and the 24th Annual Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital.

 

Dispatches from the Gulf was made possible by a generous grant from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI), with additional support from the Wallace Genetic Foundation and the Farvue Foundation.

The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality has now posted a webinar recently conducted in conjunction with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

The March 1 webinar provided stakeholders with an opportunity to learn more about the Mississippi Gulf Coast Restoration Plan and provided an overview of the Plan, MCERT, and the DSS restoration tool.

The Sea Grant Oil Spill Outreach Program has some recently released titles related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Outreach Program, funded through the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, is focused on sharing oil spill science with the people whose livelihoods depend on a healthy Gulf.

New publications:

• "Chemical Dispersants and their Role in Oil Spill Response"
• "Top 5 Frequently Asked Questions About the Deepwater Horizon oil Spill"
• "Navigating Shifting Sands: Oil on our Beaches"

• Read these articles and others related to the spill

• NOAA RESTORE Act Science Program hosts a three-year calendar that consolidates planned funding opportunities

By State:

The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in marine conservation ecology to begin as early as Fall 2016. We are especially interested in candidates who utilize innovative quantitative approaches in an area such as systems ecology and modeling, molecular genetics, resource management, fisheries ecology, population and community dynamics, ecotoxicology, or statistical modeling.  Successful candidates are expected to develop an independent externally funded research program, to teach and direct research at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and participate in school and university services. All candidates must have a Ph.D. in a field related to conservation ecology and have demonstrated excellence in research and a strong commitment to teaching. The position will be filled at the Assistant Professor level.  Review of applications will begin April 15, 2016, but applications will be considered until the position is filled.

MDEQ is soliciting written proposals from consulting firms, nongovernmental organizations and public institutions to assist, on an as-needed basis, with designing and constructing a beach outfalls challenge as more thoroughly described in the scope of work of the Request for Proposals for the Design Challenge for Measurable Improvement of Water Quality from Beach Outfalls funded through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund, Agreement #49982.

National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant Program - The primary goal of the NCWCG Program is the long-term conservation of coastal wetland ecosystems. Projects can include acquisition of real property; restoration, enhancement, or management of coastal ecosystems; or, a combination of acquisition, restoration, and management. Search grants.gov for F16AS00089.

The Gulf Research Program is accepting applications for a new funding opportunity: Scientific Synthesis Connecting Environmental, Social, and/or Health Data. These grants will support projects that will generate novel insights, address critical questions, or lead to new approaches to interpreting and using existing observations or monitoring data by bringing together concepts, methods, and/or data from different disciplines and sectors.

February

  2016 Ocean Science Meeting, February 21-26, 2016, New Orleans, La.