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

在过去20年的工作中，我们在墨西哥湾深处建立了一个大型数据库，其中包括40多个具有化学合成群落的地点和14个具有广泛冷水珊瑚发展的自然地点。由于“深水地平线”钻井平台持续的石油泄漏，其中一些地点很可能暴露在高浓度的碳氢化合物和分散剂中。在不久的将来，在这些地点的一个子集进行访问、成像和采样，将及时提供对底栖动物的任何严重影响的信息，并提供地面真实的数据，表明石油/分散剂混合物正在沿着深度密度梯度扩散。我们建议重新访问我们正在进行研究的地点，包括暴露前的组织和活珊瑚样本，以及珊瑚和珊瑚/管虫群落的良好标记和导航马赛克。MMS租赁区块VK 826的一个站点和MC 751的另一个站点被确定为高优先级站点，具有现存的马赛克，优秀的预先存在的大型动物样本集，目前使用时间序列沉积物捕集器进行监测。第三个高优先级站点位于MMS租赁的MC 294块，距离泄漏点7英里以内。这个地方有一个典型的贻贝和管虫的渗漏群落。如果正在进行的羽流建模和地面真相调查工作表明墨西哥湾有其他重要的地区或深度可供研究，那么还可以访问许多其他地区。在每个考察地点，我们将对硬地面巨型动物群落进行高分辨率成像，与去年收集的类似图像进行比较，并为一系列分析收集一系列大型动物。这些分析将包括碳氢化合物负荷分析（组织多环芳烃），评估DNA损伤的彗星分析，珊瑚黏液中细菌的磷脂脂肪酸生物标志物分析，以及在实验室条件下对活的白桦进行生长研究的实验。更广泛的影响美国历史上第一次，我们正在处理石油和分散剂的大规模泄漏和扩散（可能比石油本身对生命的毒性更大），这些分散剂被直接注入1500米以上的深海。这次灾难的规模使以往任何一次石油泄漏都相形见绌，这些物质的羽状物将如何在深海中移动，以及它们对底栖生物的影响几乎仍然是完全未知的。因此，迫切需要评估对深海巨型动物群落的影响，并尽快通报这些结果。

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.