The keynote address will be provided by Jack Davis, a professor of environmental history and sustainable studies at the University of Florida. Mr. Davis will present thoughts from his book “The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea" (2017), which received a Pulitzer Prize in 2018. As a highly engaging speaker, Davis can weave complex threads into stories demonstrating how the bountiful abundance of the Gulf of Mexico has powered our nation throughout time. The book has been called a “nonfiction epic tale” by the Dallas Morning News and “informative, lyrical, inspiring, and chilling for anyone who cares about the future of America’s Sea” by the Wall Street Journal. Professor Davis grew up along the Gulf Coast and now resides in Florida and New Hampshire. Before joining the faculty at the University of Florida in 2003, he taught at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Eckerd College, and in 2002 was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Jordan in Amman.

This panel will focus on recent restoration actions across the Gulf and plans for future actions in the next few years. To bridge between on-the-ground actions and the scientific focus of the subsequent two panels, this discussion will also address some of the challenges that lay ahead regarding resilience and restoration implementation. While there are far more funding streams dedicated to resilience and restoration in the five Gulf States, the largest are represented on this panel: RESTORE Council, Natural Resources Damage Assessment (NRDA), Gulf of Mexico Energy Securities Act (GoMESA), and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF). Speakers will identify the nexus between coastal resource management and research as well as the science and technological uncertainties that impact planning.

A panel of scientists representing a wide range of skills and geographies from Texas to Florida will engage in a wide-ranging conversation on the intersection of science and restoration. The conversation will touch on the tiered nature of restoration decisions and their implementation and how to effectively infuse research into the process, the tradeoffs embedded within restoration decisions and approaches for identifying and discussing them, and expanding how we think about restoration in the changing Gulf of Mexico. The panelist will take questions from attendees as well.

The science to understand Gulf of Mexico ecosystems has advanced across a number of fronts since Deepwater Horizon. Despite the massive increase in research projects associated with the impacts of the oil spill and how they relate to the fundamental structure and function of Gulf of Mexico ecosystems, research has continued to investigate sea level rise, coastal hydrology, harmful algal blooms, and status and changes to U.S. fisheries. This science panel will consist of timely presentations and discussions around three topics that are critical to the Gulf of Mexico.