Fragments of orange coral with white tentacles on small cement anchors in a tank.

Mesophotic coral can live at depths of 500 feet below the ocean surface. Even at this depth, some of the mesophotic corals in the Gulf of Mexico were affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Our coral scientists supporting NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science are studying the extent of this impact.

Three of our employee owners participated in a mission to extract the corals from the Gulf of America (formerly Gulf of Mexico) that were then transported to laboratories in Galveston, Texas, Gainesville, Florida, and Charleston, South Carolina. Once the Charleston specimens were housed in custom-made tanks, our scientists began studying and caring for the corals. They feed the colony multiple times daily, and study their growth and reproduction. In an effort to restore the damaged coral colonies in the Gulf of Mexico, the team is studying how to maximize growth and outplanting at a larger scale.

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Assisting Career Growth for Future Coastal Managers  

NOAA’s Margaret A. Davidson Fellowship is a two-year fellowship for graduate students that provides an opportunity for them to work side by side with researchers at one of the 30 National Estuarine Research Reserves. The fellowship provides each cohort of fellows with hands-on and cross-disciplinary research experiences, networking opportunities, and professional development and mentoring, helping to prepare them…

Special Act or Service Award

Congratulations to our team supporting the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), which is part of the U.S. National Library of Medicine!

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An Approach to Assessing Laboratory Space 

CSS employee owners were part of a team of scientists at the National Institutes of Health who developed an approach to evaluating new laboratory space to determine if the space will fit operational needs. This concept, titled The BaseLINE Approach, combines traditional safety processes with additional safety and environmental factors to assess before operations begin.…