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Corals Get Covered: The Gulf oil spill was different from many big oil spills in history because oil spewed from a well in the deep sea instead of leaking onto the ocean's surface. GoMRI scientists have found that oil remains in the deep to this day—and
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Corals Get Covered

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Eat Your Methane Wheaties: Along with oil, natural gases such as methane spewed out of the deep-sea well during Deepwater Horizon. Researchers had no idea what would happen to this methane: would it bubble to the surface, dissolve in seawater and drift awa
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Eat Your Methane Wheaties

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Drifters, Dye, and Drones: How can you follow 3.19 million barrels of spilled oil? Researchers with GoMRI's CARTHE project have set out drifters—big and small—that relay their GPS locations every five minutes. These data can help scientists understand
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Drifters, Dye, and Drones

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An underwater blizzard of oil, marine microbes, "sea snot", and algae.
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A Dirty Blizzard In the Gulf of Mexico

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Marsh Erosion Sped Up: One of the worst places for oil to end up after a spill is in marshes, where it can kill grass and cause erosion. But how much damage does it do, how far inland does it reach, and how long does the damage last? Pictured here is oiled
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Marsh Erosion After An Oil Spill

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Dispersant in the Deep: Dispersants, soap-like chemicals that cause oil to mix with water more easily, have been used with success to remove oil after a spill on the ocean's surface. But Deepwater Horizon wasn't a surface spill; instead, oil spewed into th
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Oil Spewing From Macondo Well

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A raindrop falls into a surface oil slick treated with chemical dispersant.
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A Rain Drop On An Oil Slick

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A brown-colored deep-sea coral sits on the deep ocean floor and is covered with brown oil floc.
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Anemone On Deep Sea Coral

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Sabrina Taylor, a wildlife biologist at Louisiana State University and lead scientist for the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, releases a seaside sparrow (Ammodramus maritimus) in the Louisiana marsh.
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Sabrina Taylor Releases a Sparrow

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Explore the different cultures of the territory between the Arctic and Pacific oceans. The area is home to over 150,000 Indigenous residents, whose diverse languages and cultures are both a link to history and the foundation for contemporary lives.
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Smithsonian Alaska Native Collections

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Arctic Tern on the Inner Farne Island.
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Arctic Tern

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An abandoned fishing net carrying 17 dead sea turtles was discovered off the coast of Bahia, Brazil days after a storm.
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Turtles Caught in Abandoned Net

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