Gulf of Mexico Shipwrecks, Corrosion, Hydrocarbon Exposure, Microbiology, and Archaeology (GOM-SCHEMA): Studying the Effects of a Major Oil Spill on Submerged Cultural Resources

Summary

Schema, broadly defined, is "a representative framework or plan." After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process began and the scientific community, along with several research consortia, flocked to the Gulf of Mexico to study the spill's impacts. In the fervor of project design, research questions, and the need to understand these impacts on various resources, shipwrecks (another potentially impacted resource) were largely ignored. Through Federal and academic partnerships and contracts primarily funded by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a multidisciplinary team of scientists was assembled to examine the effects of oil and dispersant exposure on deepwater shipwrecks and their resident microbial communities. Shipwrecks in differentially spill-impacted and unimpacted areas were analyzed and compared for local microbial community structure and function and degradation/corrosion processes. Presented here is the project's "schema" — its design and objectives, site selection criteria, and development through partnerships.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Deepwater Shipwrecks and Oil Spill Impacts: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Understanding Site Formation Processes...and in 3-D!   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 83