and Hopkins 1 962 for a review) , concern about the effects of petroleum 

 activities per se on the open gulf environment and biological systems 

 did not receive much attention until the late 1960's — a period of marked 

 environmental awareness on a global scale. The initial major effort in 

 response to the concern about the effects of petroleum activities in the 

 open Gulf of Mexico was the Offshore Ecology Investigation (OEI). The 

 OEI, a multidisciplinary field study conducted in waters offshore of 

 Louisiana during 1972-74, was designed to assess the cumulative 

 ecological effects of normal petroleum activities on estuarine and 

 nearshore ecosystems. Analysis and evaluation of the voluminous data 

 generated by this field effort extended this program to 1979 (Ward et 

 al. 1979). Two other major field studies, initiated by the Federal 

 Government in the northwestern gulf during the 1970's, were designed 

 specifically to assess the effects of petroleum activities on the gulf 

 ecosystem. The first project, conducted offshore of Galveston, Texas, 

 was the Environmental Assessment £f_ Buccaneer £aa and Uil Field In the 

 Northwestern Gulf of Mexico. It was funded by the Environmental 

 Protection Agency (EPA) through interagency agreement with the National 

 Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and managed by the 

 National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Southeast Fisheries Center 

 (SEFC), Galveston Laboratory in Galveston, Texas. The major objectives 

 of this program were to identify types and extent of environmental and 

 ecological alterations associated with an active gas and oil field, to 

 determine quantities and effects of specific contaminants, and to 

 develop capabilities to describe and predict impacts from petroleum 

 activities. An overview of the results of that program are provided by 

 Caillouet et al. (in prep.). During 1978-79, the Bureau of Land 

 Management (BLM) also conducted petroleum platform studies offshore of 

 Louisiana (Bedinger et al. 1980). Each of the previously mentioned 

 studies is completed (or nearly so). In addition to these, both the EPA 

 and BLM have studies currently in progress in the northern gulf which 

 are dealing directly with the effects of offshore drilling and/or 

 production activities on reef fish communities. 



One of the problems in evaluating the OEI data in terms of being 

 able to recognize system changes was the lack of comprehensive 

 pre-drilling ecological characterizations, a problem in many, if not 

 most, areas of the gulf. The lack of such information is being 

 augmented by several baseline ecological investigations, including in 

 the northwestern gulf, the BLM's South Texas Outer Continental Shelf 

 (STOCS) and topographic features studies, the Department of Energy's 

 (DOE) investigations associated with offshore brine discharges from 

 Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) sites, and various other studies such 

 as those associated with offshore supertanker ports (e.g. LOOP and 

 SEADOCK) . 



Results of these studies and other programs underway in the 

 northwestern gulf are only now beginning to surface in the published 

 literature. Much of the recent unpublished information (including this 

 author's research) will probably not appear for several additional years 

 due to the involvement of investigators in ongoing programs. The 

 primary purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the apparent structure 



