Early disagenesis of deep-water coral mounds, Atlantic Ocean

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Modern, deep-water coral carbonate mounds of the northern, circum-Atlantic region are known for their support of a high biodiversity, their record of past climatic and oceanographic changes, and their vulnerability to present environmental perturbation such as ocean "acidification". Since their rediscovery in the early 90s of the last century, these deep-water coral mounds are in perennial focus to represent a modern analogue of what geologists know and describe as "mud-rich carbonate mounds". Mud-rich carbonate mounds are important geological structures (evolution of the metazoa, hydrocarbon reservoir rocks) that, however, defy a straightforward explanation of their formation. Indeed, their content of fossils does not allow the recognition of a simple skeletal growth framework as it exits in modern and ancient reef rocks. A number of geological evidences point to the fact that these mounds grew literally "from the inside" via the authigenic precipitation of carbonate minerals during the degradation and cycling of metazoan tissue and related dissolved organic matter. This project takes advantage of a drilling campaign addressed to modern, deep-water coral mounds off Morocco. At present, these mounds are in a stage of suboxic degradation and therefore will allow the exploration of the microbial and organochemical impact on mound formation "caught in the act". This research is performed as an invited Canadian contribution to the MiCROSYSTEMS and CHEMECO projects, two interdisciplinary collaborative research projects of the EUROCORES-EuroDIVERSITY and -EuroDEEP program of the European Science Foundation.