Evidence of lasting impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on a deep Gulf of Mexico coral community

Pen Yuan Hsing, Bo Fu, Elizabeth A. Larcom, Samantha P. Berlet, Timothy M. Shank, Annette F. Govindarajan, Alexandra J. Lukasiewicz, Philip M. Dixon, Charles R. Fisher

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

54 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Article number000012
JournalElementa
Volume1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 4 Dec 2013

Funding

We thank W. Cho, C. Munro, T. Heyl, D. Cowart, and A. Sen for assistance with data collection; M. Saunders for mapping assistance; I. Baums, K. Shea, Y. Li, R. Dannenberg, K. Hovey, and E. Becker for valuable input into the manuscript. We also thank I. MacDonald, for providing the digital still camera for the October 2011 visit, and the crews of the ships and deep submergence vehicles used for this study. This work was supported by Bureau of Ocean Energy Management contract M08PC20038, the Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and the Assessment and Restoration Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation RAPID grants OCE-1045083 and OCE-1064041 (to CRF) and OCE-1045329 (to TMS), and Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative funding to support the Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf (ECOGIG) consortium administered by the University of Mississippi. Image collection using ROVs from the HOS Sweetwater and Holiday Chouest and some analyses were funded by NOAA and BP as part of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA).

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Oceanography
  • Environmental Engineering
  • Ecology
  • Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology
  • Geology
  • Atmospheric Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Evidence of lasting impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on a deep Gulf of Mexico coral community'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this