COMPARING MANUAL AND SEMI-AUTOMATIC UNDERWATER IMAGERY ANALYSIS 1 APPROACHES FOR HARD BOTTOM BENTHIC MACROFAUNA MONITORING AT OFFSHORE 2 RENEWABLE ENERGY INSTALLATIONS 3 4 Aleksej Šaškov, Thomas G. Dahlgren, Yuri Rzhanov, Marie-Lise Schläppy 5 1 Marine Science and Technology Center, Klaipėda University, Lithuania 6 2 Uni Research, Bergen, Norway 7 Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydr...

OBJECTIVES The marine benthic nitrogen cycle is affected by both the presence and activity of macrofauna and the diversity of N-cycling microbes. However, integrated research simultaneously investigating macrofauna, microbes and N-cycling is lacking. We investigated spatio-temporal patterns in microbial community composition and diversity, macrofaunal abundance and their sediment reworking acti...

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred in spring and summer 2010 in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Research cruises in 2010 (approximately 2-3 months after the well had been capped), 2011, and 2014 were conducted to determine the initial and subsequent effects of the oil spill on deep-sea soft-bottom infauna. A total of 34 stations were sampled from two zones: 20 stations in the "impact" zone v...

Responses of benthic macrofauna and epibenthic predators / sediment disturbers to controlled 22 2 density (0, 12, 120, 600 and 1200 individuals m ) and patch size (0.25, 1.0 and 9.0 m ) manipulations of the venerid bivalve Austrovenus stutchburyi (Gray) were examined on an 22 intertidal sandflat. Bivalve density manipulations greater than 600 m had a mixed influence on macrofauna colonisation; ...

DNA barcoding, as it is currently employed, enhances use of marine benthic macrofauna as environmental condition indicators by improving the speed and accuracy of the underlying taxonomic identifications. The next generation of barcoding applications, processing bulk environmental samples, will likely only provide presence information. However, macrofauna indices presently used to interpret the...

The effect of the presence of sulfide on the survival of benthic organisms under hypoxia was tested using a meta-analysis of published experimental results evaluating the effects of the presence of hydrogen sulfide on the median survival time of benthic macrofauna under hypoxia. The meta-analysis confirmed that survival times under hypoxia are reduced by an average of 30% in marine benthic comm...

Sediment properties, microphytobenthos biomass (chlorophyll a and phaeopigments), and the structure of the benthic communities of the three main lagoons (Mirim, Imaruí and Santo Antonio) of the Laguna Estuarine System, South Brazil, were analyzed during summer and winter. Microphytobenthos biomass did not differ significantly among the lagoons, but showed higher values in the summer. The macrof...

AbstractThe present study aimed to evaluate the potential for using toxicity assays with sediment samples for the detection of water pollution caused by the discharge of tannery effluents into water bodies and its application to environmental forensic investigation. The study included ecotoxicological evaluation of sediments, survey of benthic organisms in the field, as well as chromium, cadmiu...