Welcome to the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) Oil Spill Principal Investigator’s One Year Update Workshop, hosted by the National Science and Technology Council’s Sub-Committee on Ocean Science and Technology (NSTC SOST).

This conference brought together scientific investigators from academia, private research institutes, and agencies actively conducting DWH oil spill related research, monitoring, and sampling, as well as representatives from the NSTC SOST agencies.  This is an opportunity to foster new collaborations, compare initial results, interact with federal agencies, and discuss recommendations for longer term research activities.  The input gathered from researchers at the conference will be used to help the NSTC SOST federal agencies identify information needs and plan short and long term research directions.

The conference was hosted by the University of South Florida, at the Sirata Resort and Conference Center in St. Petersburg, on October 25-26, 2011.
The two-day meeting was organized around plenary talks followed by presentations and group discussion within thematic break-out groups (Agenda).  Poster sessions provided an opportunity for participants to present and discuss their work and network with others working on similar projects. 

The plenaries and thematic break-out groups covered:

• Oil and dispersants:  their extent and fate (e.g., air, surface water, water column, beaches, marshes);
• Oil and dispersant impacts and mitigation: coastal environments (e.g., near shore, shallow reefs, beaches, marshes);
• Oil and dispersant  impacts and mitigation:  offshore environments (e.g., deep ocean habitats, deep coral systems, seep communities);
• Oil and dispersant impacts and mitigation: human health and socio-economical systems ( e.g., exposure, community vulnerability and resilience);
• Oil and dispersant  impacts and mitigation: living marine resources (e.g., protected and harvested species, essential food chain);
• Use of in situ and remote sensors, sampling and systems for assessing the extent, fate, impacts and mitigation of oil and dispersants.