Leads: Chuck Fisher, Penn State University; Ian MacDonald, Florida State University; Stephanie Sharuga, NOAA 

This project obtained deep-sea coral and chemosynthetic organism presence and absence data in the vicinity of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill prior to the spill. This data was used to produce habitat suitability models for deep-sea corals and chemosynthetic ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico.

Data Sets:

Chuck Fisher: ECOsystem impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf (ECOGIG). Multi-year project that visited the same marked sites near the Macando well to assess health of the corals at each site over time.

Ian MacDonald (at TAMU during this study): Mississippi-Alabama Pinnacle Trend Ecosystem Monitoring (MAPTEM). Four-year program to characterize and monitor microhabitat on the Mississippi/Alabama outer continental shelf.

Stephanie Sharuga (at LSU during this study): Characterization of deep-sea benthic megafauna in the vicintiy of the Macando well. 

As restoration efforts continue in the Gulf of Mexico, this data will provide a predictive model for the presence and absence of deep-sea corals and chemosynthetic organisms for consideration by those making restoration and conservation decisions.

The data providers compiled, reformatted, and geo-referenced pre-existing image-associated positional information and metadata in a manner consistent with standards and specifications prescribed by NCCOS and the NOAA DSCRTP. In addition to providing access to the pre-existing images, the providers provided the following for each image:

• geo-positional information (lat, long, depth, date in UTC)
• scientific names of organisms present
• areal estimates in square meters as actual or order of magnitude
• image filepaths (or web address)
• metadata about the source of origin, such as vessel name, vehicle name and PI name