The "Deepwater Program: Northern Gulf of Mexico Continental Slope
Habitats and Benthic Ecology" (DGoMB) program is funded by the Minerals Management
Services (MMS).The program is intended to provide information
to the MMS to develop a better understanding of the deep-sea areas
that will be potentially impacted by current and future exploration
and production of fossil fuel reserves in the deep water Gulf
of Mexico (GOM), defined as the area with water depths from 300
to 3000 meters and mostly in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)
of the United States. The study is focused on areas that are most
likely to be the target of future resource exploration and production.
However, to develop an understanding of deep-sea communities,
sampling in areas beyond those thought to be potential areas for
exploration may be needed. A Gulf-wide perspective is sought to
define the structure and function of the deep-sea communities
of interest.
The study
emphasizes understanding the make-up and variability of soft-bottom
biological communities with a secondary effort to characterize
the important biological and abiotic processes that sustain or
change the observed patterns. The study will:
Sample
Locations
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
