GoMRI Attends Restore America’s Estuaries Summit in New Orleans
 Members of the GoMRI Management Team attend the Restore America’s Estuaries Summit. From left to right: Katie Fillingham, Suzanne Garrett, and Jessie Swanseen. Not pictured: Larissa Graham from Sea Grant and Rosalie Rossi from GRIIDC. Photo Credit: Katie Fillingham. |
(From Fall 2016 Newsletter) Members of the GoMRI Management Team, in partnership with the four Gulf Sea Grant programs and the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative (GRIIDC), attended the Restore America’s Estuaries Summit from December 11-14, 2016 in New Orleans, Louisiana. This year’s summit theme was Our Coasts, Our Future, Our Choice, and the goal was to discuss the current state of the coastal communities and ecosystems; understand where they are going in the future; and discuss how to balance the environmental welfare of these communities with the socioeconomic, security, and climate change concerns of the future. GoMRI, GRIIDC, and the four Gulf Sea Grant programs shared a booth in the exhibit hall distributing materials and Sea Grant publications and talking to conference attendees about the program.
Larissa Graham from the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium moderated a session which featured many scientists and science funded by GoMRI. The session was called Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Impacts to Coastal Wildlife, Fish Populations, and Wetlands in the Barataria Bay, Louisiana. The panel featured presentations by GoMRI researchers Dr. Eugene Turner from Louisiana State University, Linda Hooper-Bui from Louisiana State University, and Lori Schwacke from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well as Fernando Galvez from Louisiana State University. The session was a complement to the session prior moderated by GoMRI researcher Irv Mendelssohn called Impacts and Recovery of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill to Coastal Marshes in Northern Barataria Bay, Louisiana. A joint panel concluded both sessions, which saw many questions from the session attendees.
