Spatial analysis of cold-water coral and cold seep distributions in the Gulf of MexicoThis is where you will be able to read the text from my conference poster. Please leave comments if you have any questions about or suggestions for my research!
Background The deep Gulf of Mexico is home to numerous cold seeps and cold-water coral communities that are found within close proximity to one another.1,2 The goal of this project was to characterize the fine-scale habitat changes that occur between these two distinct communities. The chemical environment produced by seepage from the seafloor alters the local water chemistry in was that can affect coral habitat suitability. The seep microbial community produces authigenic carbonate rocks that facilitate coral settlement, but only after the negative effects of seepage (toxic hydrogen sulfide, hydrocarbons, and lower dissolved oxygen) have declined or ceased.3 Methods 1. AUV Sentry was deployed at nine sites across the northern Gulf of Mexico, measuring water chemistry within 5m of the seafloor and taking downward-looking photos. 2. Photos were visually assessed and scored for presence or absence of the following:
Results
Discussion Dissolved oxygen was hypothesized to be a limiting factor for coral distributions, but it was not significantly correlated within these sites. This may be due to GoM cold-water corals living in lower oxygen conditions than conspecifics in other oceans.4,5 Local coral habitat is most constrained by the presence of hard substrate to settle on, and the chemical influence of seepage also showed the hypothesized negative correlation to coral distribution in most cases. Future Directions
1. Cordes, E. E., McGinley, M. P., Podowski, E. L., Becker, E. L., Lessard-Pilon, S., Viada, S. T., & Fisher, C. R. (2008). Coral communities of the deep Gulf of Mexico. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, 55(6), 777–787. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr.2008.03.005 2.Cordes et al. (2009) Annual Review of Marine Science 3.Liebetrau et al. (2010) Marine Geology 4.Lunden et al. (2014) Frontiers in Marine Science 5.Georgian et al. (2016) Limnology and Oceanography 6.Quattrini et al. (2013) Molecular Ecology Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without funding from the NSF Ocean Acidification program, the crew of the 2014 R/V Altantis cruise, and the scientific AUV Sentry team.
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Alanna DurkinExploring the realm of biologically inspired design one superhero example at a time, with some other natural sciences mixed in. Archives
September 2016
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