RAPID: Collaborative Proposal: Acute response of benthic hardbottom communities to oil exposure in the deep Gulf of Mexico

RAPID：合作提案：墨西哥湾深处海底硬底生物群落对石油暴露的急性反应

• 批准号: 1045079
• 负责人: Erik Cordes
• 金额: $ 2.78万
• 依托单位: Temple University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-01 至 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1045079&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; Collaborative; Proposal; Acute; response

Over the past 20 years of work in the deep Gulf of Mexico we have assembled a large database on over 40 sites with chemosynthetic communities and 14 natural sites with extensive cold-water coral development. As a result of the ongoing oil leak at the Deep Water Horizon rig, some of these sites are very likely to be exposed to high concentrations of hydrocarbons and dispersant. Visitation, imaging, and sampling in the very near future at a subset of these sites will provide timely information on any acute impacts on benthic fauna, as well as provide ground-truthing of data suggesting that the oil/dispersant mixture is spreading along density gradients at depth.We propose to revisit sites where we have ongoing studies, including pre-exposure tissue and live coral samples, and well-marked and navigated mosaics of coral and coral/tubeworm communities. A site in MMS lease block VK 826 and another in MC 751 are identified as high-priority sites with extant mosaics, excellent pre-existing macrofauna sample sets, and are currently monitored with time series sediment traps. A third high-priority site is in MMS lease Block MC 294, within 7 miles of the leak site. This site harbors a typical seep community of mussels and tubeworms. Numerous others could be visited if ongoing plume modeling and ground-truthing work suggests other important areas or depths in the Gulf of Mexico for study.At each site visited, we will conduct high resolution imaging of the hard ground megafaunal communities for comparisons to similar imagery collected last year and make a series of macrofauna collections for a suite of analyses. These analyses will include analysis of hydrocarbon load (tissue PAHs), Comet assays to assess DNA damage, analysis of phospholipids fatty acid biomarkers from bacteria in coral mucous, and also experiments with living Lophelia pertusa for growth studies under laboratory conditions.Broader ImpactsFor the first time in US history, we are dealing with a massive leakage and spread of oil and trial dispersants (potentially much more toxic to life than the oil itself), which have been directly injected at over 1500m into the deep sea. The scale of this disaster dwarfs any previous oil spills and how plumes of these substances will travel in the deep sea and what their effects on the benthos will be is still almost completely unknown. As a result, there is a critical need to assess the impact on deep-sea megafauna communities and communicate those results as soon as possible.

在过去的20年中，在墨西哥湾的深处工作，我们在40多个地点上组装了一个大型数据库，并具有化学合成群落和14个自然地点，并具有广泛的冷水珊瑚发展。由于深水地平线钻机正在进行的油泄漏，其中一些地点很可能会暴露于高浓度的碳氢化合物和分散剂中。 Visitation, imaging, and sampling in the very near future at a subset of these sites will provide timely information on any acute impacts on benthic fauna, as well as provide ground-truthing of data suggesting that the oil/dispersant mixture is spreading along density gradients at depth.We propose to revisit sites where we have ongoing studies, including pre-exposure tissue and live coral samples, and well-marked and navigated珊瑚和珊瑚/拟南芥群落的马赛克。 MMS租赁块VK 826和MC 751中的另一个站点被确定为具有现有镶嵌物的高优先级位点，出色的先前存在的Macrofauna样品集，目前已通过时间序列序列陷阱进行监测。第三个高优先级站点是在泄漏站点7英里以内的MMS租赁Block MC 294中。该网站藏有一个典型的贻贝和肾小腔社区。如果正在进行的羽流建模和地面处理工作暗示墨西哥湾的其他重要领域或深度进行研究。这些分析将包括分析碳氢化合物负荷（组织PAH），评估DNA损伤的彗星测定，分析脂肪酸脂肪酸生物标记物来自珊瑚粘液中细菌的脂肪酸生物标志物，以及对实验性研究中的生长lophelia pertusa进行生长的实验，以实验室的范围进行了更多的影响。比石油本身有毒的毒品，它已直接注入了1500m以上的深海。这场灾难的规模使任何以前的漏油事件相形见war，以及这些物质的羽毛如何在深海中传播，以及它们对底栖动物的影响几乎仍然是完全未知的。结果，迫切需要评估对深海Megafauna社区的影响，并尽快传达这些结果。