On April 20, 2010, Kris Benson, a marine habitat resource specialist within NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation, was at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab on the Alabama Coast meeting with partners. Benson worked on Natural Resource Damage Assessments.
One hundred miles away, an explosion engulfed the oil drilling platform Deepwater Horizon. Benson and his colleagues watched the news coverage from the lab. “I knew right away that our team was going to be pulled into this really quickly,” he said.
NOAA immediately responded. As one of the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustees—a group of state and federal agencies that would evaluate the impacts of the spill and carry out restoration—they set out to answer two questions:
- How were natural resources in the Gulf injured by the spill?
- What restoration efforts could we implement to offset those losses?
Diving into Deep Gulf Restoration
The spill injured seafloor habitats in parts of the ocean that see little to no sunlight, also known as the mesophotic and deep benthic zones. These habitats are home to a complex community of fish, corals, and other invertebrates and serve as the foundation of food webs in the region.
Responding to an oil spill is complicated enough, but assessing and restoring injuries in the deep sea brings its own set of challenges. It is remote and requires special technology to reach, making it one of the least-studied ecosystems on the planet. Plus, there was limited data on deep Gulf habitats before the spill, making it difficult to document how the spill affected mesophotic and deep communities and how restoration is working.
Benson joined the early team of restoration experts tasked with developing and implementing restoration projects. Together, they’ve made great strides in advancing the field of restoration ecology in the region by improving our understanding of these deep sea habitats and restoring injured species of fish and coral.
In October 2021, they embarked on their first field expedition to collect live Swiftia exserta and other mesophotic corals injured in the spill. They sent the live corals to two federal labs and within weeks, the S. exserta fragments spawned—the first time scientists observed mesophotic corals spawning in the lab. This gave scientists an unprecedented opportunity to observe the corals’ reproductive habits, spawning behavior, and larval development. This information directly informs their efforts to restore mesophotic corals in the Gulf. It was a remarkable start, and a reminder of how much we are still learning about mesophotic and deep corals and the fish and invertebrates that depend on them.
15 Years After the Spill: Progress in the Deep Gulf
Since that first expedition, the team and collaborators have spent hundreds of days at sea, collecting valuable data and implementing restoration efforts. Each mission brings together experts and together the team has:
- Deployed long-term monitoring structures on the sea floor
- Tested new methods for coral propagation
- Removed marine debris that could threaten coral habitats
- Collected thousands of water, sediment, and biological samples
They’ve also amassed thousands of square kilometers of mapping data, allowing us to see what is on the ocean floor. With those data, the team is building models that help us predict where coral habitats can be found in the Gulf.
The at-sea work is only part of the picture, however. The team and partners also study corals in labs, which greatly expands our understanding of their growth and reproduction. They’ve also made these mesophotic corals accessible to the public for the first time through aquarium exhibits and immersive livestreams, allowing people to experience these corals and restoration efforts for themselves. The focus continues to be on synthesizing all of this new information and public engagement into effective restoration and sustainable, long-term management of mesophotic and deep benthic communities in the Gulf.
Now, Benson says, it’s not fair to say we “don’t know much” about deep Gulf ecosystems. “We actually know a lot about them, and we know more and more all the time.”
These projects are examples of the many collaborative restoration efforts in the Gulf 15 years later, we have seen great strides in restoring the Gulf’s vibrant communities—and the work continues.
