While most people look at the Gulf of Mexico and see seafood and beaches, oil executives see the Gulf differently.  They see a giant grid containing thousands of squares of possibility, each potentially yielding billions of dollars.

You see this:

(photo credit: Dmitriy Pritykin)

They see this, a grid of the entire gulf representing regions available for lease (click to enlarge):

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This is a close up off the Louisiana coast (green lines and regions are oil pipelines and fields, the pink are the same for gas):

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There are 6,652 leased squares, amounting to 22 percent of the lease-able Gulf (click to enlarge) and approximately 4,000 oil production platforms in the Gulf:

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I offer this only as an illustration of the degree to which the Gulf has been commodified.  The Gulf is big, big, big business:

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Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.