Jackson Free Press

U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus met with representatives from Mississippi universities and colleges Friday to gather information on the economic and environmental recovery of the Coast following the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

"How do we make sure the Gulf is whole, environmentally and economically? The research our institutions of higher learning can do, and their job skill retraining, will be absolutely crucial as we move forward," Mabus told reporters at the Institutions of High Learning.

President Barack Obama appointed the former Mississippi governor last month to oversee the federal government's restoration plan for the Gulf. During Friday's meeting, Mabus said state universities will factor heavily in making sure data is collected, and emphasized that future studies should be "science-driven and carefully thought through."

Colleges and universities will also be one of the primary powers in re-educating the state's workforce to obtain new jobs to replace those destroyed, either temporarily or permanently, by the disaster. Mabus said that the oil spill--despite its destruction--could open doors through which the state prepares for the economy of the future.

"One of the things this crisis is going to do, is force us to begin to look at the economy of the Gulf and consider how we move it from being so dependent upon oil and gas and into different sources of technology and different careers," Mabus said.