Scientists at UC Santa Barbara will spend the next year studying the effects of last May's big oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel.
The Simons Foundation is giving a $588,000 grant to a team from the University's Department of Earth Science so that the situation can continue to be studied.
The researchers are looking to understand how the spill impacted the area's ecosystem through affected microbes, and how those microbes may have now adapted.
The people on this team have been studying the Refugio spill site since it first happened. The scientists say it's rare to have access to such a major ecological study site from day one.
The New York-based Simons Foundation supports a wide range of scientific research.