With the announcement July 2 that BP has settled federal, state and local claims related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill for a total of more than $18.7 billion, leaders with Texas’ RESTORE Centers of Excellence are moving forward with plans to use millions in spill-related Clean Water Act funding on research and science activities that will benefit Texas and help to restore the health of the Gulf of Mexico.

A sampling of more than 1,000 Gulf of Mexico fish, shrimp, oysters and blue crabs taken from Cedar Key, Fla., to Mobile Bay, Ala., between 2011 to 2013, shows no elevated contaminant levels, according to a seafood safety study conducted by Dr. Andrew Kane and colleagues at the University of Florida.  In fact, some 74 percent of the seafood tested showed no quantifiable levels of oil contaminants at all.

The dispersant used to remediate the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is more toxic to cold-water corals than the spilled oil, according to a study conducted at Temple University. The study comes on the eve of the spill’s fifth anniversary, April 20.

When oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill first began washing ashore on Pensacola Municipal Beach in June 2010, populations of sensitive microorganisms, including those that capture sunlight or fix nitrogen from the air, began to decline. At the same time, organisms able to digest light components of the oil began to multiply, starting the process of converting the pollutant to carbon dioxide and biomass.

New study says some is sitting on the Gulf floor.

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill may have been nearly four years ago, but scientists are still analyzing the after effects of the disaster that threatened the Gulf Coast.

Researchers from the University of Rochester and Texas A&M University have found that, over a period of five months after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, naturally-occurring bacteria removed at least 200,000 tons of oil and natural gas.