A University professor recently spent a year finding, testing and documenting a new species of pancake batfish in the Gulf of Mexico’s depths, but he didn’t expect that discovery to be threatened shortly after by the oil-well blowout in April.
 
Prosanta Chakrabarty, an assistant professor and Curator of Fishes for the LSU Museum of Natural Science, knew Daniel Janies, associate professor of Biomedical Informatics at The Ohio State University, through previous endeavors. Janies’ work tracking diseases and viruses like avian flu and H1N1 with sophisticated computer programs and ample data interested Chakrabarty.
 
Now, the Ohio Supercomputer Center, Google Earth and the dedication of a Buckeye-Tiger collaboration are fueling research to map the spill’s effects on not only the rare species Chakrabarty helped discover, but also on the more than 600 species of fish found in the northern Gulf.
 
“Soon after the spill, I saw Prosanta [Chakrabarty] in the news a lot, so I knew we should get this project off the ground,” Janies said. “Here’s a fish right off our shores that hadn’t been recognized, and now the spill is threatening it.”
 
The pair repurposed one of Janies’ virus-tracking programs to translate data from government agencies, like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, paired with historical museum records and Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries collections data into maps that show how the moving oil affects the Gulf’s numerous species of fish.
 
Data before the spill provides a baseline of how species — including those fish migrating and spawning in the Gulf, like the bluefin tuna — typically behaved, while new collection data will show where the fish go and how they’re impacted.
 
“This before and after is really where we can begin to see the effects of the spill,” Janies said of project, named DEPTHMAP.
 
The maps will not only show where oil was on any given day but also how the oil affects the habitats of certain species.
 
“We’re going to do that for every day of the spill so people can track where the spill was, on the surface at least, and where fish were at the time,” Chakrabarty said.
 
The deep sea, with blinding darkness, chilling temperatures and high pressure, is “the largest, most stable habitat on Earth,” Chakrabarty said, “and the fragile species that call the depths home are easily affected.”
Chakrabarty said the pair started the project during July and to date have entered pre-spill data for about a dozen species. He said they’ve asked LSU for $150,000 of the $5 million the University has received of the $500 million total BP promised to fund various research projects here and at other institutions, as well. Janies said they’ll also seek additional funding from other state and federal agencies.
 
The pair said they would use the money to hire at least one technician to help each of the researchers in addition to other expenses. Janies said though some graduate students are already helping with research and data entry, they’ll need more hands on deck if they hope to document all 600 species in the northern Gulf.
 
Janies said researchers interested in species other than fish, like invertebrates, will eventually be able to input their own data into the maps, allowing the project to show a wider spectrum of the oil’s influence.
 
“In the long term, this will show the impacts and also demonstrate the usefulness of this technology,” Janies said.
 
 
 
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Contact Nicholas Persac at [email protected]