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Amazing Coral Images from ECOGIG

The research team leading our current 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.

Read more to learn about the remarkable deep-sea colonial organisms we call coral.