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TDI-Brooks Celebrates 25 Years!
est 1996
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TDI-Brooks was formed in 1996 when Dr. James Brooks and Dr. Bernie Bernard recognized the market need for specialized oceanographic research and left their management positions within Texas A&M University research center in College Station to build an independent, privately held oceanographic research and marine sample acquisition service company. | |
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The corporate headquarters of TDI-Brooks is situated on 75 acres (northwest of Houston) in South College Station, Texas. Here you will find a state-of-the-art environmental, geochemical and geotechnical laboratory facility where TDI-Brooks provides high-quality analytical and scientific interpretation services.
TDI-Brooks is a research and service company specializing in high-end environmental chemistry; multi-disciplinary oceanographic and environmental projects; surface geochemical exploration and heat flow; geotechnical and offshore survey projects for the O&G industry as well as federal and state agencies.
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TDI-Brooks has an office located in College Station, Texas with a remote office in Houston, Texas . TDI-Brooks also has strategically placed base offices in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Accra, Ghana and with branch offices in Gurgaon (Haryana), India, Bogota, Colombia and Mexico City, Mexico. | TDI-Brooks has a staff of nearly one-hundred individuals including fourteen (14) Ph.D. level oceanographers, geochemists, biologists, and geologists, many of which are Texas A&M graduates. Our environmental, geochemical, and geotechnical laboratories are staffed with highly skilled scientists and chemists who have worked in partnership with federal and state agencies as well as the private energy and environmental industry for over 25 years. | |
TDI-Brooks currently has twenty-eight (28) Aggies on staff and were honored and excited to maintain a 50% growth rate annually over the past two years. In 2020, TDI-Brooks proudly received for the fifth (5th) time the "Aggie 100" award landing them at the No. 44 spot, with their laboratory affiliate B&B Laboratories previously receiving two (2) awards. The The McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship "Aggie 100" organization honors the 100 fastest growing Aggie-owned or -led businesses across the world. | |
Below are some historical pictures of their A&M staff over their 25 years of service, many of whom are still working for the company today. Several of these employees served with Jim & Bernie since inception of TDI-Brooks in 1996 including Rodrigo Corzo, Roger Fay, Donell Frank, Chuck Kennicutt, Chris King, James Howell, Tom McDonald, Debbie Paul, Juan Ramirez, Daniel Vitale and Gary Wolff. | |
COVID may have kept TDI-Brooks from visiting clients however our staff and our three offshore research vessels continued working diligently both in the office and offshore. In the challenging times of the pandemic, clients were able to continue to rely on us to deliver the same service we have since 1996. | |
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Bob initially owned a consulting company for the Oil & Gas Industry in Houston. In 1996 Jim Brooks & Bernie Bernard partnered with Bob to open TDI-Brooks and in the late 90’s they bought Bob out. Over the years, Jim and Bernie remained close to Bob as he continued to provide consulting to the company. He could also be found traveling globally to a variety of exhibitions to man the TDI-Brooks’ booth and network with clients and potential clients.
Sadly, Bob passed away at the age of 86 in June of 2018 leaving behind a legacy along with a vast number of industry friends.
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A quote from Bob's family was suitable for the Bob we all knew
“He was a collector. His rocks, coins, the knives and things collected from his childhood and travels always displayed prominently. And the stories... oh the stories. How we will miss his stories! Even the ones that began “I know I’ve told you this one before but I like it so I want to hear it again.”"
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Jim Brooks and Bernie Bernard started by developing their capabilities in the marine seabed geochemical exploration market, a market that they personally originated in the early 1980s while at the Texas A&M University.
Since 1996, TDI-Brooks has collected over 40,000 deep-water piston core sediment samples and heat flow stations for every major oil company. This includes projects in areas such as Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico (US and Mexico), the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic, offshore Brazil and West Africa.
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Environmental Studies
Since inception of the EBS concept in the early 1970’s, TDI-Brooks International’s scientists have been performing EBSs for clients in the most rigorous regulatory environments. Decades of experience in refining techniques, working with regulatory agencies, and developing a functional network of specialists/associates provides our clients with an effective and defensible approach to resolving environmental impact issues in the marine environment.
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Seabed Geotechnical Surveys
TDI-Brooks offers a comprehensive suite of geotechnical analytical services for characterizing offshore geotechnical samples. Our suite of innovative geotechnical tools are for soil sampling and measurement and include box corers (BC), piston corers (PC), gravity corers (GC) and jumbo piston corers (JPC).
TDI-Brooks can provide soil testing services through our in-house geotechnical laboratory.
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These chemosynthetic cold-seep mussels along with other chemosynthetic fauna such as tubeworms and clams were first sampled in the mid-1980's by Dr. Brooks' team at Texas A&M University whilst studying oil/gas seepage in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico with a surface geochemical exploration (SGE) tool. These deep-water cold seeps fueled by oil and gas seepage have been since studied by Dr. Brook's team and other scientists through a series of projects funded mostly by the Minerals Management Service (MMS) in the 90's and 00's. | | |
Continuing from 2005 thru 2024, TDI-Brooks has been awarded the National Status and Trends (NS&T) Program, Mussel Watch and Bioeffects Programs. TDI-Brooks and our affiliate B&B Laboratories conducts the field sampling and trace organic analyses on tissues and sediments collected. | The Mussel Watch Program is the longest continuous, nationwide contaminant monitoring program in U.S. coastal waters. The program analyzes sediment and bivalve tissue chemistry for a suite of organic contaminants and trace metals to identify trends at over 300 selected coastal sites from 1986 to present. TDI-Brooks and our affiliate B&B Laboratories will conduct the field sampling and trace organic contaminant portions of this project. | |
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State-Of-The-Art-Laboratory | |
TDI-Brooks provides laboratory analysis of sediment and water samples collected via their state-of-the-art laboratory facility in College Station, Texas. The environmental, geochemical, and geotechnical laboratories provide high-quality analytical services and scientific interpretation. | |
In the Fall of 2020, B&B Laboratories earned ISO 17025 accreditation for poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) analyses in water, soil/sediment, and tissue samples. These novel analyses are some of the company’s first to employ liquid chromatography/triple quadrupole mass spectrometry, or LC/MS/MS. PFAS are highly durable compounds, giving them the moniker “forever compounds”, and as a result are being detected in many areas of the environment including water, soil/sediment, and in the tissues and organs of marine and terrestrial wildlife. | |
Our Community Involvement and Employees | |
TDI-Brooks is committed to investing in the communities and environment in which they live and work. That means dedicating time, efforts and funds to support opportunities wherever they emerge. They have a history of developing relationships with non-profit partners to deliver a positive impact and drive sustainable projects that make a difference. TDI-Brooks strives to provide a professional service to support each client and project by incorporating industry resources, relationships, technology, and safe practices. | | | |
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Heroes Luncheon
TDI-Brooks is a proud Sponsor of the Bryan College Station Lions International Club’s annual Luncheon honoring local Heroes. The luncheon is a salute and thank you to the Brazos Valley Area law enforcement, firefighters and emergency response professionals.
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Each year TDI-Brooks supports the Brazos County Youth to Career Fair which aims to expose area 8th graders to careers as they enter high school and begin to think about plans after graduation. Our team looks forward to each year explaining our methods and tools use for offshore surveys. | | |
TDI-Brooks are proud to sponsor the annual Buddy Walk in support of our employees with children with Down Syndrome. Since 1995, the Buddy Walk has become the premier advocacy event for Down syndrome. It is also the most widely recognized public awareness program for the Down Syndrome community. | | |
TDI-Brooks and B&B Laboratories teamed up to present a glow-themed workshop “Get Your GLOW On” for over 30 Girl Scouts from Central Texas eager to learn more about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). | |
TDI-Brooks supports Aggieland Pets With A Purpose, a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to enriching the lives of Brazos Valley area residents by enhancing their physical, social and emotional well-being with the unconditional love of pets. | |
TDI-Brook’s donation to the College Station High School Cougar Band helps fund production, composition, new instruments, uniforms, transportation, judges, scholarships and so much more. | |
Above are just a few of the organizations we support. You can find the entire list by clicking on the image below and visiting our website. | |
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Dr. James M. Brooks
President and Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Brooks is President of TDI-Brooks International, Inc., a company specializing in offshore research and survey studies for federal/state agencies as well as the oil industry. TDI-Brooks was founded in May 1996. The company owns and operates four (4) multi-use oceanographic research vessels.
Dr. Brooks was the founder and Director of GERG at TAMU until Sept. 1995. As Director between 1975 and 1996, he built an organization specializing in high quality analytical, oceanographic and environmental research and services with annual revenues between 1991 and 1995 of around $10 million/year. In August 1995, he directed a staff of ~130 people, including 28 Ph.D. level senior personnel, ~60 professional MS- and BS-level full-time research scientists and ~40 other staff. He has been Project Director on many federal projects for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Minerals Management Service (MMS), Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and other state and federal agencies. He has extensive experience in the management of large environmental and oceanographic projects as well as the technical competence in environmental and geochemistry, surface geochemical exploration, oil spill assessment, gas hydrates, chemosynthetic ecosystems, stable isotope geochemistry, and oceanography. He has academic credentials consisting of 210+ peer-review publications including numerous publications in prestigious journals such s Science and Nature. He has served on many national committees, conferences and workshops. He has chaired 19 M.S. and Ph.D. committees at TAMU. He has won the Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award for Research awarded annually by the Association of Former Students of Texas A&M University. He previously held an appointment in the Faculty of Toxicology at Texas A&M University as well as an Advisory Council Member, Southeast Advisory Council for Undersea Research and Education (SEACURE) for NOAA’s Undersea Research Center at UNCW (NURC).
|  | Dr. Brooks at continues to manage federal projects such as the NOAA National Status and Trends (NS&T) Mussel Watch project, which is the premier, long standing coastal environmental monitoring program in the nation. He is in his 20+ year of management of this project. He is also involved in the commercial and/or technical management of generally over $30 million yearly of industry sponsored projects many of which are multidisciplinary. Dr. Brooks has been conducting research and oil industry-sponsored service projects in the Gulf of Mexico for the last 35+ years. |  | As part of his surface geochemical exploration (SGE) studies, which he developed for industry in the early 1980’s, he has collected 10,000+ cores in the Gulf, mostly in the deep water. These SGE coring studies resulted and contributed to the discoveries of macro oil seepage, chemosynthetic communities, and gas hydrates in the Gulf of Mexico. He was a co-discoverer of oil seep and chemosynthetic communities in the deep water Gulf of Mexico in 1985. He made the first discoveries of thermogenic gas hydrates in the deep water Gulf of Mexico that was published in Science as well as participated in the initial discoveries of other oil-seep related phenomena including oil-stained cores on the continental slope, widespread occurrence of shallow and outcropping gas hydrates, brine seepage, and visible oil seepage to the sea surface. In the late 80’s and early 90’s he was awarded extensive NOAA National Undersea Research Program (NURP) JOHNSON SEA-LINK, ALVIN, and Navy NR-1 submersible dive time in the Gulf of Mexico. | | |
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Dr. Bernie B. Bernard
Vice President and Chief Technology Officer
Dr. Bernard received a Ph.D. in chemical oceanography from Texas A&M University in 1978. For the next two years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma School of Geology and Geophysics, Dr. Bernard taught graduate level courses in Organic Geochemistry and Isotope Geochemistry.
In 1980, he accepted a position as Vice President of O.I. Analytical, Inc., a supplier of analytical instruments for the measurement of trace organics in water, soil, and air. While at OI, he was the director of R&D, designing and bringing to market instruments for the measurement of gases, volatiles, and petroleum hydrocarbons in the environment.
In 1993 he was appointed Deputy Director of the Geochemical and Environmental Research Group of Texas A&M University, serving with his long-time friend and Director of GERG, Dr. James M. Brooks.
|  | In 1996, Dr. Bernard partnered with Dr. Brooks in forming TDI-Brooks International, Inc., where he is a co-owner, Vice President, and Technology Director. TDI-Brooks is a Texas company that delivers high-quality field surveys, analytical services, and scientific interpretation, to the marine oil exploration, geotechnical, and environmental survey marketplace. | |
Dr. Bernard has over 40 years of experience in natural gas geochemistry, including a career focus in the measurement and interpretation of molecular and isotopic compositions of the light hydrocarbon gases in the marine environment.
His published models for the interpretation of the natural sources of light hydrocarbon gases have become commonly known in the scientific literature as “Bernard Plots” and are cited by investigators worldwide in their research, papers, and presentations.
| The analytical methods he has developed for the measurement of the concentrations of interstitial gases in marine sediments are also in wide use, and have resulted in an accumulation of and data from over 40,000 cores taken in the continental shelves, slopes, and the deep water adjacent to continental margins worldwide. | In addition, Dr. Bernard has led the development of several innovative seabed survey tools used in offshore geotechnical engineering surveys, including the TDI-Brooks CPT-Stinger, Gravity CPT tool, and an Auto-T-Bar instrument. | | |
Thank you for taking this journey with us. We appreciate each and every one of you. | | | | | |
