Abstract

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill was one of the largest marine spills in the world (McNutt et al. 2011), leaked 7.94 x 108–1.11 x 109 L of crude oil into the northern Gulf of Mexico, and lasted for 84 days. The estimated peak flow was 1.552 x 107 L d-1 (Ryerson et al. 2012). At its maximum, the surface expression of the discharge covered 62,159 km2 (Norse and Amos 2010). This response included use of 2.9 x 106 L of Corexit dispersant (Place et al. 2010) that was applied at the surface and the 1500 m deep subsurface leak at the wellhead. At the 2010 American Fisheries Soci-ety (AFS) meeting in Pittsburgh, a symposium was held to address response, recovery and research efforts following this historic spill. Subsequently, the editors of this new book, brought together experts researching the Exxon Valdez, Ixtoc I and DWH spills at the 2011 AFS meeting in Seattle for a symposium. This forum presented timely infor-mation regarding large-scale oil disaster impacts to North American marine ecosystems. There are 15 chapters of peer-reviewed manuscripts presented in three sections: Ecotoxicology of fishes impacted by oil-derived compounds, Oil im-pacts to physical habitat in coastal ecosystems, and Population and community dynamics following oil spill disasters. The estimated release date for the book, which will be published by CRC Press, is January-February 2014.

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