In: Cahiers de Biologie Marine. Station Biologique de Roscoff: Paris. ISSN 0007-9723; e-ISSN 2262-3094
Also appears in:
(1998). Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent Biology: Funchal, Madeira, Portugal 20-24 October 1997. Cahiers de Biologie Marine, 39(3-4). Station Biologique de Roscoff: Roscoff. 219-392 pp., more
Dependence upon seeping hydrocarbons places Gulf of Mexico chemosynthetic fauna squarely in the one deep-sea locality most likely to be affected by human activities. Expansion of the offshore energy industry has experienced several expansive episodes in the past twenty years. All of these have increased activities at ever greater depths. The amount of seafloor influenced by seepage is quite small compared to the extent of the subbottom hydrocarbon system and industry engineers generally strive to avoid the unstable substrate at seeps (Reilly et al., 1996). Nonetheless, the Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling and production, has stipulated limits to activities that might impact seep communities (MacDonald et al., 1995). Current interest lies in improving the capacity to predict where seep communities will occur and in understanding processes that contribute to either stability or change in this environment so that anthropogenic changes could be distinguished from natural processes. It is therefore important to identify processes that cause major variation in composition among seep communities : Differences between vent and seep chemosynthetic habitats and habitat-shaping processes at hydrocarbon seeps.
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