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ECOGIG: The Beginning

E/V Nautilus’s third leg of the 2014 Expedition will take place in the Gulf of Mexico to study the impacts of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on deep sea corals in the region.

The research team leading the cruise is the ECOGIG (Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs into the Gulf of Mexico) consortium. The consortium is made up of scientists from a wide variety of disciplines studying current flow, ocean chemistry, microbial activity, deep-sea coral communities, and everything in between. ECOGIG, funded as a part of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI), is studying both natural oil and gas seepage into the Gulf of Mexico and the ecosystem responses and effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.

Keep an eye out for more pictures from above and below the water as the dives continue.