DEEPEND and GRIIDC Partnership Continues

white wave effect
DEEPEND website.

Photo credit: restore.deependconsortium.org.

GRIIDC is excited to announce that we are continuing our partnership with the DEEPEND (Deep-Pelagic Nekton Dynamics) consortium! GRIIDC has been working with DEEPEND since 2015 as a Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) consortium. DEEPEND was recently a recipient of the NOAA RESTORE Science Program grant and will continue to use GRIIDC as their data repository for five years. We are thrilled to continue supporting their important work in the deep sea and are ready for more data!

NOAA RESTORE Science Program:

Vital Gulf of Mexico research continues, with the NOAA RESTORE Science Program recently completing its third funding competition and awarding approximately $15.6M to four teams of scientists and natural resource managers, DEEPEND being one of them. The research groups aim to study trends in living coastal, marine resources and the processes driving them in the Gulf of Mexico. They also plan on investigating the effects of fire in marshes, response to environmental changes in oyster, blue crab, and spotted seatrout populations; detecting trends in pelagic and deep-sea organisms by linking historic data with new data; and describing the variability of reef fishes and their environments. Read more about NOAA RESTORE Science Program Science Plan here.

Deep-Pelagic Fauna:

DEEPEND plans to investigate the topic: Trends and drivers of faunal abundance of the offshore Gulf of Mexico: narrowing the data gap in the Gulf’s largest ecosystem component. The research will be headed by Dr. Tracy Sutton as Director, April Cook as the Project Manager, and Dr. Matthew Johnston as Data Manager of Nova Southeastern University. The project objective is to, identify long-term trends in fishes, shrimps, cephalopods and other fauna in the deep pelagic zone of the Gulf of Mexico. The purpose is to supply coastal resource managers with this information since they are responsible for the many species that rely on these deep-sea creatures for food, some of which are marine mammals.

Data Management Services:

GRIIDC will provide our standard data management services such as providing storage, Digital Object Identifiers (DOls), statistics and status of dataset submissions through the GRIIDC website, dataset package review and approval, metadata validation and quality checks, group or individual training sessions on the use of the GRIIDC Data Management System (DMS) and data management best practices. In addition to these services, GRIIDC will also work with DEEPEND to develop individual dataset plans in collaboration with DEEPEND Director and data managers and make each project's dataset planning information available through the GRIIDC website.

This new contract establishes GRIIDC as DEEPEND’s data repository for the next 5 years with the possibility of an extension to 10 years if their work continues. Their data collection for this project will commence on April 25, 2021. We welcome new and previous researchers from DEEPEND and are excited to continue working with this dynamic group!