Dr. Thomas Shirley, the HRI's endowed chair of marine biodiversity and conservation science, and Dr. Wes Tunnell, the Associate Director of HRI, organized the Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean Marine Invasive Species Workshop hosted by the HRI Feb 26-28, 2007.

Co-hosting the workshop with the HRI was the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), which has on staff several scientists studying marine invasive species around the world.

Shirley brought the HRI and SERC together through his professional relationship with SERCs Director, Dr. Anson (Tuck) Hines. "Hines and I were working together at Kodiak Island last year and devised this workshop as a way of picking everybody’s brains as to the different aspects of the problem of invasive species and to different techniques being used to study it," Shirley said.

Thirty-five invited researchers, managers and others concerned with the impacts of non-native species participated, selected for their expertise and knowledge of invasive species. In addition to scientists from the US, scientists from several nations bordering the Caribbean, including  Venezuela, Jamaica, Trinidad-Tabago and Mexico, attended.

The workshop examined the issues surrounding marine invasive species in the Gulf of Mexico and broader Caribbean region. The purpose was to explore the needs for monitoring, evaluating and controlling these species.

"We had the top invasive species expert in the world, Dr. Jim Carlton, as our keynote speaker," Shirley said.

The Problem with Invasive Species

Due to the globalization of the planet, mass transit and international commerce, invasive species is becoming an increasing problem.

"You can go online and order oysters from anywhere and have them shipped to you live. Or bait worms shipped in seaweed, which can carry over 100 live species with it," Shirley said.

Green mussels taking over the intertidal waters in Tampa Bay and giant spotted jellyfish shutting down shrimping in the northern Gulf of Mexico are two real examples of how invasive species have affected quality of life and the local economy in the Gulf region.

"We don’t have a marine version of fire ants or Africanized bees or tree frogs but marine invasive species are just as real as the land-based variety," Shirley said. "We sit in fire ants and know the problem right away. People aren’t as much aware of marine invasive species. They haven’t made the same splash but they are a very real issue."

The problem that HRI's invasive species workshop addressed was that of non-native species becoming an increasing threat to marine coastal environments and their biodiversity. Because these organisms come from outside a region, they present a complex set of research and management challenges.

Invasive Species in the Gulf of Mexico

The US Gulf Coast extends over four unique marine regions and the Mexican Gulf Coast incorporates additional ones. The Caribbean region includes several island groups with diverse tropical environments and a large number of endemic species.

The regions also have drilling platforms that provide habitat and active ports that facilitate movement of species via ballast water or fouling on ship hulls.

Ballast water from ships traveling great distances is a common method for invasive species to move from one environment to another.

Even ships that go from one US port to another can transport invasive species. Laws that would protect us in international waters don’t apply to national waters.

For example, the US government keeps a ready reserve of military and maritime ships to be used in case of national emergency. Anchored in a bay near San Francisco, these ships are destined to be transported to Brownsville, Texas, to be dismantled bringing with them fouling communities from San Francisco Bay, Shirley said.

The ships were never meant to be stable when empty so they will be filled with San Francisco Bay water (and larvae that lives in it) when they reach the Gulf of Mexico.

Ballast water holds zooplankton and phytoplankton or larvae of benthic organisms like crabs, clams. Release of ballast water into a new environment can bring red tide or other marine maladies, as the organisms may not cause a problem in their native habitat but can cause a big problem in a new location.

Dr. Shirley's Research

Shirley is especially interested in artificial reefs created by human-made structures such as oil and gas platforms and ship wrecks in the Gulf, which help contribute to the survival of invasive species by providing habitat.

"Invasive species is one of the major issues I’m studying," Shirley said. "I do a lot of deep water biology, looking at animals that live on ships (tankers and freighters) sunk by U-boats during World War II in the Gulf of Mexico." Since the shipwrecks are found at depths to 2,000 meters and deeper below the surface, he uses remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) equipped with cameras to conduct his research.

"Deep sea shipwrecks are surrogates for deep water platforms," he said. And nowadays with the oil industry reaching deeper and deeper for oil in the Gulf (below 10,000 feet in some places), knowledge of deep water habitat is valuable.

"When the platforms end their life, the oil companies have to remove the drilling structure one year after production ends. They would prefer to leave them there as artificial reefs. Rigs to Reef program allows them to do that in shallow water. But we don’t have data that allows them to do that in deep water," Shirley explained.

"We are looking at six different World War II shipwrecks that had been down there for 62 years when we sampled them. You get very strong communities of sea life around ship wrecks so the same could be true of deepwater platforms."

"In the Gulf of Mexico we have 60 percent of the world’s oil platforms, most of which are standing offshore in deep water, in effect creating a steel archipelago," Shirley said. "They make great study platforms. We are submitting research proposals to various agencies to address the problems," Shirley said.

In addition to studying invasive species, Shirley is an invertebrate taxonomist, constantly working on describing new species he finds and other scientists find. "Most of the species of the world are un-described," he said. "Some are important, but you don’t know it til they’re gone."