Gulf Coast of the United States Pensacola, St. Petersburg, Tampa, and increasingly, Sarasota. All are the centers of their respective metropolitan areas and contain large ports. (Baton Rouge is relatively far from the Gulf of Mexico; its port is on the Mississippi River, as is the port of New Orleans.) The Gulf Coast is made of many inlets, bays, and lagoons. The coast is also intersected by numerous rivers, the largest of which is the Mississippi River. Much of the land along the Gulf Coast is, or was, marshland. Ringing the Gulf Coast is the Gulf Coastal Plain which reaches from Southern Texas to the western
Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies for the world’s ninth largest body of water; and establish a cohesive strategy for ensuring the Gulf of Mexico’s ecological and socioeconomic health and productivity. The second State of the Gulf of Mexico Summit held December 4–8, 2011, in Houston, Texas, highlighted the strong need for a platform to develop a shared vision of a healthy Gulf in the aftermath of the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill catastrophe. In order to formulate a roadmap for restoring the Gulf, government, NGO and academic experts addressed a broad range of issues including: loss of wetlands, hypoxia, coastal resiliency, ecosystem health, marine