NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation (OHC) in the National Marine Fisheries Service is participating in an Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group studying marine life in the Gulf of Mexico and the impact of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill on that life. The NOAA Central Library was consulted to create this annotated bibliography to provide OHC with literature on the mesophotic and deep sea corals in the Gulf of Mexico. In particular this bibliography covers the impacts of the DWH oil spill, mapping and restoration techniques for those coral communities. 

The Program, in partnership with NOAA Ocean Exploration, enabled a field research program in the Pacific Islands region between 2015–2017 that provided a first look at deep-sea coral and sponge ecosystems in the marine monuments throughout the region, and in other areas of interest such as hydrothermal vents and seeps, isolated seamounts, and mid-water biological and chemical characterization. This report covers the deep-sea coral and sponge research.