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Foreword: Fifty-Year Update of Bulletin 89 Just over fifty years ago, a group of prominent marine scientists of their day agreed to begin work on a digest of existing knowledge on the Gulf of Mexico. The effort was proposed by Lionel A. Walford of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Waldo L. Schmitt of the U.S. National Museum of Natural History during a meeting of the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute in Miami. Paul S. Galtsoff of the Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to coordinate the project, the magnitude of which he subsequently found far exceeded his expectations. However , three years of effort by fifty-five contributors and additional months of editing resulted in the 1954 publication of a classic reference work entitled Gulf of Mexico—Its Origin, Waters, and Marine Life as Fishery Bulletin 89, Fishery Bulletin of the Fish and Wildlife Service, volume 55 (Galtsoff, 1954). The table of contents for the volume appears at the end of this foreword. On the title page of the work is an explanatory note that it was “Prepared by American scientists under the sponsorship of the Fish and Wildlife Service, United States Department of the Interior” and that the effort was “Coordinated by Paul S. Galtsoff,” who is generally indicated as the editor in bibliographic references to it. For more than fifty years this reference volume—commonly referred to simply as “Bulletin 89” by hosts of marine scientists, agency personnel, and students familiar with it—has provided a benchmark on which to build. Chapters on the history of exploration, geology, meteorology, physical and chemical oceanography , biota, and pollution remain extremely valuable as reference works, some now primarily for historical context. Counted among the contributors were the most distinguished North American marine scientists of their day, and visibility for a number of them was further enhanced by the extensively cited chapters they contributed to this volume. The group included the most qualified federal agency scientists, museum curators, marine laboratory investigators, and university professors who could be assembled. It broadly represented taxonomic authorities selected to cover almost every possible biotic group, with acknowledged omission of some groups for which willing expertise could not be found. The original Bulletin 89 was heavily slanted toward biology, reflecting the focus of that era. A page count by topic reveals 63% biology (plant and animal communities 10%, biota 53%), oceanography 11%, geology 9%, history 6%, pollution 4%, meteorology 2%, and the index 5% (see table of contents). At the time of this writing, only one of the fifty-five original contributors remains alive. However, all the original contributors, and especially the far larger number of students they mentored, have contributed to a massive body of information on the Gulf of Mexico since 1954. In addition to this core group, a number of other workers—many now in laboratories, agencies, and university programs that did not exist fifty years ago—have made tremendous contribu- viii Tunnell, Felder, and Earle tions to the baseline knowledge of the Gulf of Mexico since publication of the original volume. In September 2000, Ed Harte, former owner of the Corpus Christi CallerTimes and Harte-Hanks Publishing, gave Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi (TAMU–CC) a $46 million endowment to establish a research institute to study and conserve the Gulf of Mexico. Soon afterward, then President Robert Furgason obtained an additional $18 million from the State of Texas for a building to house the institute. Sylvia Earle, whose book Sea Change (Earle, 1995) had inspired Harte’s gift, was invited to chair the Advisory Council. She and Bob Furgason then began establishing a world-class Advisory Council of leaders in science, academics, conservation, government, and industry. John W. (“Wes”) Tunnell Jr. was subsequently asked to serve as associate director to assist in guiding the institute development process, to coordinate construction of the new building, and to develop a new doctoral-level graduate program with other TAMU–CC faculty. This newly developing organization was given the name Harte Research Institute (HRI) for Gulf of Mexico Studies (Tunnell and Earle, 2004). Further information about HRI and TAMU–CC can be found at their respective websites (www.harteresearchinstitute.org and www.tamucc.edu). After two HRI Advisory Council meetings, Wes Tunnell was encouraged to develop some “early” projects during the formative years of HRI in order to get a jump start on its mission of developing a cooperative and collaborative research institute focused on the long-term sustainable use and conservation of the Gulf...

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