Image: The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) has selected a group lead by the University of Georgia’s Samantha Joye to conduct scientific studies of the impacts of oil, dispersed oil and dispersant on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem and public health. The three-year, $18.8 million dollar ECOGIG-2 program is a collaborative, multi-institutional effort involving biological, chemical, geological and chemical oceanographers including Marine Sciences faculty Christof Meile, Renato Castelao and Catherine Edwards. Joye states that “Our work will explore the basics of oil and gas cycling at natural seeps, discern the impacts of chemical dispersants on microbial populations and their activity and on the fate of discharged hydrocarbons, use sophisticated instrumentation and physical and biogeochemical models to track hydrocarbon transport and continue to document recovery of deep-water ecosystems from the Macondo blowout.”
