The Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service announced that it has provided new funding to Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, for the geographic expansion of an ongoing major oceanographic program studying deepsea life into Mexico’s southern Gulf of Mexico waters. "This is an unprecedented collaborative effort with Mexico to study the deepest, least studied areas of the Gulf of Mexico," said Chris Oynes, Regional Director for the Gulf of Mexico OCS Region. "Besides being a major contract modification, it is a major international research initiative."

The existing MMS study of deepwater bottom (benthic) communities in the Gulf of Mexico, "Gulf of Mexico Continental Slope Habitats and Benthic Ecology Study," will be expanded through a collaborative effort with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Originally, the study involved sampling of the U.S. continental slope seafloor from depths of 200 meters to nearly 3,200 meters. The first two field years of sampling (2000-2001) ended abruptly at the boundary between the U.S. and Mexican Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ). With the additional funding this year, the third year of sampling, the 182-foot (56-meter) Texas A&M Research Vessel (R/V) Gyre, will survey selected stations in the waters of both countries and deploy various sampling and experimental devices into the dark, cold, and poorly understood depths of the dynamic and complex Gulf.

MMS’s additional funding of almost a half-million dollars will enable TAMU and UNAM scientists to study the abyssal plain of the Sigsbee Deep in the central and southeastern Gulf of Mexico, bringing the total contract award to $5,325,713.

Water depth is thought to be a major factor in controlling the distribution of marine organisms living on the seafloor. Extending sampling to the maximum depth of the Gulf’s Sigsbee abyssal plain (about 3,700 meters or 2.3 miles deep) will significantly improve the statistical tests used in characterizing the effects of depth and comparing the Gulf with other oceanic basins. The deep abyssal plain is expected to have the lowest community biomass, organism density, and rates of biological processes (for example, growth, predation, and respiration). The study of the contiguous deep basin will allow for the testing of a number of additional hypotheses. It will offer an effective means to achieve a more complete understanding of the biological resources at risk as oil and gas development activities move into increasingly deeper waters. The consistency in sampling, analytical, and statistical methods will further ensure comparable scientific results across the entire basin.

Texas A&M University has a long-term Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with UNAM that provides for student and faculty exchange, joint research projects, and combined ship operations. The existing MOU simplifies the permitting processes required for international sample collection, and provides for the import, export, and sharing of scientific samples.

MMS is the federal agency in the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages the nation's oil, natural gas and other mineral resources on the outer continental shelf in federal offshore waters. The agency also collects, accounts for and disburses mineral revenues from federal and Indian leases. These revenues totaled nearly $10 billion in 2001 and more than $120 billion since the agency was created in 1982. Annually, nearly $1 billion from those revenues go into the Land and Water Conservation Fund for the acquisition and development of state and federal park and recreation lands.