Marine snow increases the adverse effects of oil on benthic invertebrates

Temporal Variability of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Deep-Sea Cephalopods of the Northern Gulf of Mexico

“…The GC/MS/MS was operated in Multiple Reaction Monitoring mode (MRM) to characterize parent and alkyl PAHs at a high resolution without interferences in the chromatograms. Molecular ion masses for PAHs (precursor and product ions) were selected based on previous studies using GC-MS/MS-MRM (Sorensen et al, 2016;Adhikari et al, 2017;Romero et al, 2018;van Eenennaam et al, 2018). For accuracy and precision of analyses we included laboratory blanks for every 10-14 samples, spiked controls for every 14-18 samples, tuned MS/MS to PFTBA (perfluorotributylamine) daily, checked samples with a standard reference material (NIST 2779) daily, and reanalyzed sample batches when replicated standards exceeded ±20% of relative standard deviation (RSD), and/or when recoveries were low.…”

“…Deep-sea cephalopod species are of particular interest due to their role in the diets of large fishes and marine mammals (Davis et al, 2007;Young et al, 2010;Romeo et al, 2012;Logan et al, 2013;Lalas and Webster, 2014;Salman and Karakulak, 2019;Southall et al, 2019). They are also voracious predators (Stewart et al, 2014;Corrales et al, 2015;Hoving and Robison, 2017) and are therefore potential vectors for contaminants through the water column (Unger et al, 2008).…”

Marine Oil Snow, a Microbial Perspective

“…Oil and sediment deposition following the MC-252 spill impacted the benthic macrofauna and meiofauna (including foraminifera whose carbonate shells provide a temporal sedimentary record), reducing their abundance and biodiversity (Montagna et al, 2013;Baguley et al, 2015;Schwing et al, 2015Schwing et al, , 2017Schwing et al, , 2018Washburn et al, 2017). The main drivers of these changes have been assigned to the introduction of toxic oil compounds (van Eenennaam et al, 2018(van Eenennaam et al, , 2019, an increase in anoxic conditions due to aerobic consumption of the added organic carbon (Hastings et al, 2016(Hastings et al, , 2020, or a combination of both (Schwing et al, 2015). However, the composition of the oil assumed in these predictions did not take into account the biodegradation that occurs during descent through the water column prior to deposition on the seafloor (Stout and Payne, 2016a;Bagby et al, 2017; Supplementary Table 1).…”

“…However, the composition of the oil assumed in these predictions did not take into account the biodegradation that occurs during descent through the water column prior to deposition on the seafloor (Stout and Payne, 2016a;Bagby et al, 2017; Supplementary Table 1). For example, van Eenennaam et al (2018van Eenennaam et al ( , 2019 applied 3 or 10 g per m 2 of fresh Macondo surrogate oil in their mesocosm experiments. The use of fresh oil is unrepresentative of what was actually deposited on the seafloor, which was a wax-rich, severely biodegraded residue lacking the more bioavailable and toxic components of the oil (Stout and Payne, 2016a).…”

Theoretical Insight into the Biodegradation of Solitary Oil Microdroplets Moving through a Water Column

“…In spite of this long-term bright side, large amounts of dispersed oil droplets in the seawater column disturb the established ecosystem dynamics and pose an imminent risk of toxic effects from various crude oil components to many marine species (invertebrates, fishes, mammals, etc.) [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. In particular, small oil droplets might be more toxic than crude oil itself, if consumed by fish and marine mammals [ 14 ].…”