Soft sediment meiofauna community responses to environmental pollution gradients in the German Bight and at a drilling site off the Dutch coast

Abstract

During the Bremerhaven Workshop, the meiofaunal communities along 2 supposed North Sea pollution gradients, one at a drilling site off the Dutch coast and the other across the German Bight, were analysed by a variety of univariate and multivariate techniques and the changes on community structure related to a suite of measured environmental variables. At the dnlllng slte the only evidence of change in community structure was a slight reduction In the abundance of nematodes in the deeper parts of the sediment (2 to 10 cm) close to the drilling slte. Otherwise, there were no significant differences between sites using any other measure of community structure. It is concluded that suffic~ent tlme had elapsed since the cessation of drilling activity for a complete recovery of the copepod communities. Any differences which may still have been detectable in the nematode communities had been confounded by the scale of sediment disturbance caused by recent storms. Significant differences were found in the meiofauna communities along the German Bight transect but these are mainly correlated with corresponding changes in sediment granulometry and water depth. Although the addition of zlnc unproved the correlation between environmental variables and copepod community structure, it is argued that heavy metal contamination on thls gradient is not likely to influence meiofaunal communities because (1) there is llttle variation in concentrations and (2) these concentrations are not particularly high when compared to other unpolluted (and polluted) areas of the North Sea.

Soft sediment meiofaunal community structure in relation to a long-term heavy metal gradient in the Fal estuary system

“…BIOENV analyses from the German Bight (Gee et al 1992) also implicate heavy metals as determinants of meiobenthic community structure, although in this study confounding effects of changes in sediment structure and depth tended to obscure any relationships between meiofauna1 community structure and levels of pollutants. In the present study the sampling design attempted to eliminate such confounding factors as far as possible.…”

“…Heavy metals are an important component in many marine discharges, including sewage, industrial wastes and mining wastes (Bryan 1976). Although sediment metal concentrations have been implicated in pollution effects in the meiobenthos (Tietjen 1980, Gee et al 1992) few discharges to the sea alter sediment metal concentrations in isolation and it is therefore difficult to separate the toxic effects of heavy metals from, for example, organic enrichment.…”

Meiofauna as a Tool for Marine Ecosystem Biomonitoring

“…Variable responses in terms of nematode abundance after oil contamination have been reported in the relevant literature: abundance may be relatively unaffected (Boucher, 1980;Elmgren et al, 1983;Fricke et al, 1981;Gee et al, 1992), or, in contrast, can significantly fall (Beyrem et al, 2010;Carman et al, 1995;Danovaro et al, 1995Danovaro et al, , 1999Elmgren et al, 1980;Giere, 1979;Mahmoudi et al, 2002Mahmoudi et al, , 2005. The phenomenon of rapid recovery is present only in some cases (Fig.…”

The meiofaunal community structure of a Mediterranean lagoon (Gialova lagoon, Ionian Sea)

“…The highly labour-intensive methods of identifying meiofauna to species level not only require a great deal of time and expertise, but may be too sensitive (Gee et al 1992) as the natural fluctuations in meiofaunal species density and distribution can mask the larger impacts of unnatural events (Warwick and Clarke 1993). Furthermore, experiments analysing successively higher taxonomic groups, in both macro-and meiofauna, show disturbance effects to be equally detectable using the highest taxonomic levels Herman and Heip 1988;Warwick 1988;Warwick et al 1990;Warwick and Clarke 1993).…”