

All of the stress over the past month paid off; I made my first poster, went to my first conference, and met many new connections. Over the past few years, I have read many papers on the oil spill and it was exciting to finally see and listen to the scientists behind the research; to put a face to the name. When it was my turn to present, I was nervous at first but I knew the material and was eager to share what I have done with other interested individuals.
To give you a brief overview, I looked at cores collected from 2010-2012 from three locations, 2 affected sites (PCB06 and DSH08) and one natural seep site (Seep A). I picked benthic foraminifera from three depth increments representing two pre-Deepwater Horizon (DWH) event deposits and one post-DWH event deposit. We found the dominant taxa present in all three cores to be Bulimina aculeata and Uvigerina peregrina. Bulimina spp. are often found in environments with low oxygen (Miller and Lohmann, 1982) and Uvigerina spp. are found where there is low oxygen levels and high organic carbon flux (Miller and Lohmann, 1982) which would be a result of the “Flocculent Blizzard” (Brooks, G.R. in review). Both cores, PCB06 and DSH08 show effects from the DWH event; PCB06 with its decreasing diversity of benthic foraminifera up-core and DSH08 with its lack of density and diversity of benthic foraminifera species in the surface sediments. Seep A seems to be less affected; there is an increase in species diversity up-core which may suggest that the community was already “primed” or adapted to oil deposition. We now hope to look at cores collected from the same locations but from 2011, 2012, and 2013 to determine how the benthic foraminifera communities are recovering from the oil spill.
I will make it a point to go over my research in more detail in following posts but I wanted to share my experiences over the past few weeks and how perseverance can lead to great things!
References:
- Brooks, G.R., Larson, R.A., Flower, B., Hollander, D., Schwing, P.T., Romero, I., Moore, C., Reichart, G.-J., Jilbert, T., Chanton, J., Hastings, D., In Review. Sedimentation Pulse in the NE Gulf of Mexico Following the 2010 DWH Blowout.
- Miller, K.G. Lohmann, G.P., 1982. Environmental distribution of Recent benthic foraminifera on the northeast United States continental slope, in: Lohmann, G.P. (Ed.). Geological Society of America Bulletin, pp. 200-206.
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Emily Hladky - St. Petersburg, FL |