How Did the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Affect Coastal and Continental Shelf Ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico?

Comparative Abundance, Species Composition, and Demographics of Continental Shelf Fish Assemblages throughout the Gulf of Mexico

“…The GoM is a large (158 × 10 6 ha), deep (average depth = 1,485 m), semi‐enclosed sea (Figure ; Darnell ) that supports highly diverse fish communities (1,500+ species; McEachran ) and valuable fisheries (Murawski et al. ). Continental shelf waters of the GoM exhibit a diversity of benthic habitat types and depth profiles (Figure ).…”

“…) and its likely pulse impacts on the resiliency of continental shelf fish populations in the GoM (DWH Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustees ; Murawski et al. ). Given the ever‐expanding quest for oil and gas resources in all three national exclusive economic zones of the GoM, it is prudent to assess the vulnerability of fish assemblages at the LME scale.…”

Temporal Variability of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Deep-Sea Cephalopods of the Northern Gulf of Mexico

“…This was highlighted in 2010 by the absence of baseline data during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DWHOS) in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). The DWHOS occurred at a depth of 1500 m, releasing approximately 4000000 barrels of oil that contaminated vast areas of the water column (e.g., oil residues rose to form surface slicks contaminating the water column, subsurface plumes concentrated at 900-1300 m) and coastal environments (e.g., marshes, beaches), as well as an extensive area of the seafloor (about 76000 km 2 by sinking of oil residues from the water column) (Dietrich et al, 2012;Brooks et al, 2015;MacDonald et al, 2015;Romero et al, 2015Romero et al, , 2017Daly et al, 2016;Harding et al, 2016;Murawski et al, 2016;Yan et al, 2016). The deep-pelagic habitat in the GoM was among the environments most affected by the DWHOS, as indicated by multiple studies detecting high concentration of contaminants and shifts in the composition of microbial communities (Hazen et al, 2010;Fisher et al, 2016;Wade et al, 2016;Yan et al, 2016).…”

The Vertical and Horizontal Distribution of Deep-Sea Crustaceans in the Order Euphausiacea in the Vicinity of the DeepWater Horizon Oil Spill

“…One might anticipate that this species would be more profoundly affected by the oil spill that the shallower living species. However, extensive sampling of the water column in 2010 from the surface to just above the seafloor showed PAH concentrations higher than 0.3 µ/L in (Murawski et al, 2016;Romero et al, 2018), levels which are toxic to marine organisms (Whitehead et al, 2012). Therefore, it is unlikely that any species specific effects would be present.…”