© Lophelia II 2010, NOAA OER and BOEMREThe sea fan Paramuricea sp. with the symbiotic brittle star Asteroschema sp. from a site in the Garden Banks region of the Gulf of Mexico. This apparently healthy coral was observed during the first leg of the cruise at approximately 360 meters depth and over 450 km away from the site of the Deepwater Horizon.
"It reminds me of going to a family funeral," said Charles Fisher, a biology professor at Penn State University, and chief scientist on a recent mission to study the impact of the Gulf oil spill on coral in the area.
Just like seeing extended family, "it's always fun to go into the deep sea, and we saw a lot of life," he said. "But, on the other hand the reason you're there is not a happy reason. Some corals have been severely slimed. Some are dead or dying."
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., led a nine-day mission this month to study
the effects of the oil spill on life at the
bottom of the sea. A team of scientists set out on a research vessel, spending just over a week in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.
Equipped with both an autonomous submarine called Sentry, as well as a submersible called
Alvin, the scientists photographed, mapped and collected samples from the Gulf nearly 24 hours a day. They completed six dives on Alvin, and set up a camera near the site of a dying coral reef, which will snap photos every hour for the next two months monitoring the coral's heath.