Bottlenose dolphins in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, are showing signs of severe ill health, according to NOAA marine mammal biologists and their local, state, federal and other research partners.Barataria Bay, located in the northern Gulf of Mexico, received heavy and prolonged exposure to oil during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Based on comprehensive physicals of 32 [...]
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced that it will open a comment period and hold a series of public scoping meetings to gather information to be used in preparing an Environmental Impact Statement for two proposed oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico’s Eastern Planning Area. As the President discussed in [...]
Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost land the size of Delaware—about 1880 square miles. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, if this trend continues, Louisiana will lose a wetland area larger than the size of Manhattan every year. These losses are a disaster not just for citizens who are seeing their land wash away, but [...]
NOAA has awarded the first year of an anticipated five-year, $4 million grant to scientists researching the causes of Ciguatera fish poisoning, the most common form of algal toxin-induced seafood poisoning in the world, focusing on the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. Ciguatera affects tens of thousands of people annually, but the occurrence has been [...]
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has completed a draft environmental impact statement regarding multiple oil and gas lease sales tentatively scheduled between 2012 and 2017 in the Western and Central Gulf of Mexico planning areas, offshore the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The proposed Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program: [...]
Over the past decade, the greater Gulf of Mexico region has been battered not only by hurricanes and oil spills, but by numerous natural and human-caused events such as tornadoes, droughts, harmful algal blooms, dead zones, and wildfire. The impacts from these events have lasting effects on vital economic drivers such as fishing, boating and [...]
The amount of air pollutants in the atmospheric plume generated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was similar to a large city according to a new NOAA-led study published today in a special issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) and NOAA’s Cooperative Institute [...]
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) Research Board has issued a new request for proposals, RFP-II, which will provide up to $7.5 million per year for research grants to individual investigators or small groups of researchers. The funding is part of BP’s commitment to provide $500 million over ten years to support independent scientific [...]
The federal government ignored the impact of BP’s 200 million gallon oil spill in its assessment of risks and precautions for the Gulf of Mexico before the first new lease sale since the Deepwater Horizon disaster, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in D.C. federal court by conservation groups. In deciding to proceed with Lease [...]
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission approved a groundbreaking shark conservation rule that prohibits the recreational and commercial harvest, possession and landing of tiger and hammerhead sharks in state waters (up to 3 miles off the Atlantic coast and up to 9 miles off the Gulf coast). “The Commission should be commended for implementing [...]
Florida scientists and veterinarians studying the causes of sea turtle deaths in the Gulf of Mexico have been awarded $227,793 for the first year of an anticipated three-year, $653,379 project to determine how the red tide toxin, or brevetoxin, affects turtle health. Endangered sea turtles inhabit areas in the Gulf of Mexico where toxic red [...]
During December 4 – 8, 2011, at the Omni Galleria in Houston, Texas, hundreds of experts and leaders from academic institutions, government, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector will come together at the 2nd State of the Gulf of Mexico Summit (SGM SUMMIT2011). Unprecedented cooperation has established the groundwork for this diverse conference. Leaders have [...]
In 2001, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) created a program to explore Earth’s largely unknown ocean for the purpose of discovery and the advancement of knowledge. This program, now part of NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER), continues to advance NOAA and national goals to better understand the ocean through discovery, [...]
Pathology experts contracted by NOAA have identified the bacteria Brucella in five bottlenose dolphins that died in the northern Gulf of Mexico. These five are among the 580 dolphins in higher than expected strandings that began in February 2010 and are continuing. NOAA has declared it an “unusual mortality event,” triggering a focused, expert investigation [...]
Despite the fact that the federal government issued citations against BP that said it failed to protect safety and the environment in regards to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill disaster (trial date February 2012), they are allowing the company to bid for new oil drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico. Michael Bromwich, the head [...]
The Food and Drug Administration seriously underestimated the cancer risk from contaminants that can accumulate in seafood when the agency allowed commercial fishing to resume in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill disaster, a new study published today found. The study was published online today by the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, authored [...]
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