Evidence of lasting impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on a deep Gulf of Mexico coral community
Evidence of lasting impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on a deep Gulf of Mexico coral community
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深水地平线漏油事件对墨西哥湾深部珊瑚群落产生持久影响的证据
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发表时间：
2013
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
C. Fisher
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作者：
P. Hsing;Bo Fu;Elizabeth A. Larcom;Samantha P. Berlet;T. Shank;Annette F. Govindarajan;Alexandra J. Lukasiewicz;P. Dixon;C. Fisher
在深水地平线井喷现场西南11公里处发现了一个珊瑚群落，水深1,370米，在2010年11月3日封顶3.5个月后被发现。现场的柳珊瑚部分被一种棕色的絮状物质(Floc)覆盖，这种物质含有在漏油事件上留下指纹的碳氢化合物。在这里，我们量化了在17个月的五次访问中，这个地点珊瑚的可见变化，方法是将每个殖民地的单个分支的图像数字化，并对它们的状况进行分类。到2011年3月第三次访问珊瑚时，2010年11月可见的大部分浮游生物已从珊瑚中消失，在第一次访问后，显示出明显影响迹象的殖民地比例中位数有所下降。在我们2010年第二次访问期间，也就是第一次访问后大约六周，我们记录了受影响的珊瑚分支开始水生定居(珊瑚退化的迹象)，并在研究剩余时间内有所增加。在2012年3月的最后一次访问中，受影响部分珊瑚殖民地的水生生物定居情况与2010年底头两次访问期间被絮凝体覆盖的殖民地比例呈正相关。同样，到2012年3月，受影响部分珊瑚的明显恢复与2010年底覆盖的珊瑚比例呈负相关。撞击的一个显著特征是其在群体内部和群体之间的斑驳性质，这表明撞击剂在最初与珊瑚接触时并没有均匀分散。虽然明显可见影响的中位数随着时间的推移而下降，但水生生物定居的开始和视觉上不明显的影响的可能性表明，未来的访问可能会揭示这些通常寿命较长的珊瑚的状况进一步恶化。
A coral community 11 km southwest of the site of the Deepwater Horizon blowout at 1,370 m water depth was discovered 3.5 months after the well was capped on 3 November 2010. Gorgonian corals at the site were partially covered by a brown flocculent material (floc) that contained hydrocarbons fingerprinted to the oil spill. Here we quantify the visible changes to the corals at this site during five visits over 17 months by digitizing images of individual branches of each colony and categorizing their condition. Most of the floc visible in November 2010 was absent from the corals by the third visit in March 2011, and there was a decrease in the median proportions of the colonies showing obvious signs of impact after the first visit. During our second visit in 2010, about six weeks after the first, we documented the onset of hydroid colonization (a sign of coral deterioration) on impacted coral branches that increased over the remainder of the study. Hydroid colonization of impacted portions of coral colonies by the last visit in March 2012 correlated positively with the proportion of the colony covered by floc during the first two visits in late 2010. Similarly, apparent recovery of impacted portions of the coral by March 2012 correlated negatively with the proportion of the coral covered with floc in late 2010. A notable feature of the impact was its patchy nature, both within and among colonies, suggesting that the impacting agent was not homogeneously dispersed during initial contact with the corals. While the median level of obvious visible impact decreased over time, the onset of hydroid colonization and the probability of impacts that were not visually obvious suggest that future visits may reveal additional deterioration in the condition of these normally long-lived corals.