Rates of sediment O2 uptake, CO2 production, sulfate reduction and acetate turnover were examined during January 1992 in the Ao Nam Bor mangrove, Phuket, Thailand. The impact of air exposure on O2 uptake was most pronounced in the intensely bioturbated high-intertidal zone (6.4 times higher than during water cover), and decreased to almost zero in the low-intertidal zone. This indcates a gradual increased area of sediment-air contact zones with tidal elevation due to changes in surface topography. Based on an average water cover for January, the diurnal O2 uptake -and thus total decay of deposited detritus -was 4 to 5 and 8 times faster in the high-intertidal compared to the mid-and low-intertidal zones, respectively. Sulfate reduction rates were generally low. The depthintegrated (0 to 30 cm) sulfate reduction was highest in the mid-intertidal zone, and supported 85 % of the estimated daily CO2 release. In the high-and low-intertidal zones, sulfate reduction supported 11 and 92%, respectively, of daily CO2 release. Rates of acetate uptake were also higher in the midthan in the low-intertidal zone (no data from high-intertidal) However, the depth-integrated acetate uptake was consistently about 2.6 times the rates of CO, release and 5 to 6 times the 0 to 11 cm integrated sulfate reduction, which suggests that pool sizes of acetate and thus uptake rates may have been overestimated. In conclusion, while benthic respiration in the mid-and low-intertidal zones of the Ao Nam Bor mangrove was dominated by sulfate reduction with acetate as carbon source. 'suboxic' conditions related to bioturbation in the active high-intertidal sediment made respiration by other electron acceptors than SO.,-more important.

We examined the effect on ammonium oxidation and sulfate reduction of several brominated compounds 14-bromophenol, 2,4-dibromophenol (2,4-DBP), 2,6-dibromophenol and 2,4,6-tribromophenol] that occur naturally in enteropneusts. We compared rates of these processes with and without bromoorganics using bulk intertidal sedirnents and burrow wall sediments from 3 enteropneust species (2 containing 2,4-DBP and 1 containing 2,3,4-tribromopyrrole), a mollusc (Mya arenaria) and a polychaete (Nereis virens). Sulfate reduction in bulk sediment was unaffected by bromophenols at concentrations