Two years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, its impact is still being felt. Temple biologist Erik Cordes is part of a group of scientists who have long been studying the Gulf's coral communities and have now seen the spill's damage firsthand. They discovered a coral community about seven miles from the well that had come in contact with the spilled crude. "We could see that everywhere they had been covered, the tissue was either gone or completely degraded," said Cordes.