VIDEO OF THE WEEK Underwater Blizzards The Gulf of Mexico contains a dazzling array of tiny animals including bacteria, algae, and jellyfish. When they die, they mix with decaying plant material and fecal matter to form white fluffy bits that slowly fall toward the seafloor. This phenomenon is known as “marine snow” and it forms…
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Monthly Archives: November 2017
Dispatches E-News: Happy Thanksgiving (11/22/17)
HAPPY THANKSGIVING The “Dispatches From The Gulf” team wishes everyone a happy holiday. Dispatches from the Gulf 1: Science • Community • Recovery In the years after Deepwater Horizon – the biggest oil spill in U.S. history – a global team of scientists is working together to understand its environmental impact on humans, wildlife, and…
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Dispatches E-News: Oysters Part 2, Lionfish & Colwell Wins International Prize for Biology (11/15/17)
VIDEO OF THE WEEK Mardi Gras, Jazz, and Oysters (Part 2) Dr. Sean Powers is chairman of Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama. He and his colleague, Meagan Schrandt, are studying oyster reefs along the Gulf coast. One of their key missions is to discover why Louisiana oyster reefs haven’t recovered since the…
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Dispatches E-News: Oysters Part 1, Mr. Spock & A Whale Learns to Talk (11/08/17)
VIDEO OF THE WEEK Mardi Gras, Jazz, and Oysters (Part 1) New Orleans is a city defined by Mardi Gras, jazz, and oysters – lots of oysters. For more than 150 years, Louisiana was the nation’s largest source of the shellfish. Thanks to a perfect combination of brackish and warm water, each day thousands of…
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Dispatches from the Gulf – E-News (11/01/17)
VIDEO OF THE WEEK Marshes: Good News & Bad News Professor Ed Overton and his team from LSU are monitoring the condition of Louisiana’s coastal marshes. These marshes are nursery grounds for the northern Gulf of Mexico fisheries. Oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill flowed down into crab burrows and stayed buried along the beaches….
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