the Scripps Institution of Oceanography), chief science officer Chuck Wilson (former Louisiana Sea Grant director) and 18 additional members comprised of experts in relevant scientific disciplines (Zimmermann et al. 2021). All proposals were peer reviewed by subject matter experts chosen independently by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership (an organization whose members comprise most oceanographic institutions in the USA); grantees were encouraged to publish their findings in disciplineappropriate outlets, including a number of AFS journals.An important and novel stipulation of the Master Research Agreement between BP and GoMRI was that data sets resulting from research be available to the science community and public. Resultingly, for the over 1,700 peer-reviewed scientific papers published with GoMRI support, over 3,200 data sets are now freely available to the public through the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative (Wilson et al. 2021). AFS might well consider emulating a similar repository for data from studies it publishes.In its 10 years, the GoMRI supported over 1,400 doctoral and graduate students (Wilson et al. 2021). The decade between 2010-2020 resulted in as many publications of Gulf of Mexico-relevant science as the previous 6 decades combined (McKinney et al. 2021), partly due to the infusion of GoMRI funding primarily into the Gulf's academic community. This gets to a larger issue of the historic underinvestment in Gulf science, highlighted by the large information gaps revealed during and after the Deepwater Horizon spill. AFS's policy missives should emphasize the importance of continued investments in science-in the Gulf and elsewhere-that support so many of the important societal challenges we face, and especially those at the nexus of energy, climate change, and fisheries.