?Interest in the Gulf of Mexico has been greatly accelerated in the past decade, and there is much evidence that this interest will continue, which should result in the eventual solution of many of the present riddles of the Gulf of Mexico. (Lynch, 1954), p. 83 When S.A. Lynch wrote these words half a century ago, gas hydrates were not anticipated as one of the ?riddles? of the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf). Gas hydrates were not predicted to occur in the Gulf until 1979, when key indicators in seismic data suggested their presence (Shipley and others, 1979a). Samples of these elusive materials were not discovered in the Gulf until about 1983, when hydrate was recovered in cores and dredges in the Green Canyon area (Brooks and others, 1984; Kennicutt and others, 1985). Since these first discoveries in the Gulf, studies have expanded rapidly: now the Gulf is one of the best studied natural laboratories for understanding sea-floor gas hydrate mounds and marine gas hydrate occurrence within a leaky world-class petroleum system.