Mesophotic and Deep Benthic Communities Portfolio
In 2016, the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Trustees reached a settlement resulting from the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process to resolve BP Exploration and Production’s liability for natural resource injuries caused by the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Part of the settlement requires BP to pay up to $8.8 billion dollars to federal and state trustees for the purposes of restoring natural resources that were injured by the spill, and the services they provided. More details can be found at the Deepwater Horizon NRDA page: A Comprehensive Restoration Plan for the Gulf of Mexico.
The DWH Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group (OO TIG) includes the four federal Trustee agencies: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI); U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA); and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The trustees work together to plan and conduct restoration for species injured by the oil spill, including wide-ranging and migratory species. Questions about the OO TIG can be directed to openocean.TIG@noaa.gov. Additional information can be found in the DWH Administrative Record.
Mesophotic and deep benthic communities (MDBC) are vast and complex ecosystems on the ocean floor that are a foundation of Gulf of Mexico food webs. The MDBC portfolio is a suite of four projects selected by the OO TIG to restore MDBC injured by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The four projects include: Mapping, Ground-truthing, and Predictive Habitat Modeling (MGM), Habitat Assessment and Evaluation (HAE), Coral Propagation Technique Development (CPT), and Active Management and Protection (AMP).
Portfolio Documents and Products
The MDBC Portfolio comprises four coordinated projects. The Portfolio Deliverables site provides access to documents and products created to inform and support this effort at the portfolio level, including those designated as deliverables by the MDBC Portfolio.
Project Documents and Products
These repositories include documents and products that were created to inform and support the efforts of each project team. These are not formally designated as deliverables by the MDBC Portfolio but may be helpful to share with the stakeholder community.