Study discovers 60 new fish in Gulf of Mexico
A study that sailed out of Houma has delved the dark depths of the Gulf of Mexico and discovered a 60 new, weird and sometimes scary species of fish that live deep beneath the ocean surface.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, or GoMRI, paid for the study along with numerous other projects in the wake of the 2010 BP oil spill. BP even paid $500 million that was put toward projects to study the deep waters of the Gulf and the effects of oil on the water, plants and animals.
"About four months or so after the spill was capped, I got call from (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) who's in charge of damage assessment," said Tracey Sutton, an oceanographer at Nova Southeastern University who worked on the study. "The problem that NOAA had was that they had no data on what lived deep in the Gulf, so they had no means to assess the damage."
The study, called the DEEP END, took three voyages out of Houma on the Megsknsi. Each voyage took three months and used specialized nets to take around 16,000 samples of fish from below 3,280 feet. Sutton said this was the largest of its type ever made.
Read more: http://www.houmatoday.com/news/20170324/study-discovers-60-new-fish-in-gulf-of-mexico
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