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These cells are from a pygmy sperm whale in a laboratory culture dish. The red dyed cell are forming into fat cells after exposure to endocrine disruptors.

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Cells Get Fat

January 2015

Gulf Marsh Animals Bounce Back But Monitoring Continues: One of the biggest questions is how Gulf animals will fare in the years after the spill, since oil spill impacts don't often happen immediately. One group of GoMRI researchers studied salt marsh anim

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Fiddler Crabs In a Gulf Marsh

January 2015

Blue Crab walking in wet sand.

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Blue Crab On The Gulf Coast

January 2015

Follow the Fingerprint: There are many sources of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, including natural deep-sea oil seeps, small spills from ships, and oil from roads that washes into the sea—not to mention big oil spills like Deepwater Horizon. How do GoMRI res

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Layers of Weathered Oil

January 2015

An underwater blizzard of oil, marine microbes, "sea snot", and algae.

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A Dirty Blizzard In the Gulf of Mexico

January 2015

A Tiny Fish Tells A Big Story: Some fish only spend a part of the year in the Gulf of Mexico, but some, like the Gulf killifish, live there year-round. In addition, these estuary fish are small and abundant, making them an excellent study species for scien

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Killifish in the Gulf of Mexico

January 2015

Marsh Erosion Sped Up: One of the worst places for oil to end up after a spill is in marshes, where it can kill grass and cause erosion. But how much damage does it do, how far inland does it reach, and how long does the damage last? Pictured here is oiled

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Marsh Erosion After An Oil Spill

January 2015

Dispersant in the Deep: Dispersants, soap-like chemicals that cause oil to mix with water more easily, have been used with success to remove oil after a spill on the ocean's surface. But Deepwater Horizon wasn't a surface spill; instead, oil spewed into th

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Oil Spewing From Macondo Well

January 2015

A raindrop falls into a surface oil slick treated with chemical dispersant.

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A Rain Drop On An Oil Slick

January 2015

Wave Tank At SL Ross sitting idle in a bunker like structure.

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Wave Tank At SL Ross

January 2015

Jeff Chanton's students collect plankton in large nets called plankton tows during the May 2012 R/V Weatherbird II Cruise in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Collecting Plankton

January 2015

Methane-eating bacteria (also called methanotrophs) helped clean up the Gulf oil spill, such as Methylococcus capsulatus shown here.

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Oil Spill Methanotroph

January 2015