Benthic Biology in EUMELI2, the IFREMER (France) Component of JGOFS

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This project represents a request for supplemental support for salary and expendables to permit participation in EUMELI 2, France's component of JGOFS. The project will be carried out in conjunction with French marine scientists who will be conducting multidisciplinary studies aboard the new IFREMER research vessel, ATLANTE, at a series of stations off NW Africa. The PI has been invited to participate in one leg of a 3-leg expedition presently scheduled for February 1991. IFREMER will provide G. Rowe and G. Boland with travel and shipping funds, and will make ship time available. The project will provide a benthic lander to measure total community respiration and dissolved inorganic nutrient regeneration, a newly described box core to take undisturbed bottom samples, and an array of near-bottom sediment traps. The GOMEX box corer will allow quantification of the biomass of the three principal size groups in the sediments - the bacteria, meiofauna and macrofauna. Direct comparisons will be made between this new device and the USNEL spade core to be used by IFREMER on the expedition. This also provides an opportunity to compare the Texas A&M lander with the lander used by Dr. Richard Jahnke, a geochemist, another U.S. invited participant. Short-term sediment trap samples form deep, near-bottom moored traps will be used to provide fresh, unadulterated samples to chemists and microbiologists, and for comparison with long-term and short-term flux measures to be conducted by IFREMER at their designated sites.