Last Chance to Register! SUT Learning Luncheon:Biodiversity and Habitat Diversity of Continental Margins: Potential Responses to O&G Industry Activities

Continental margins are characterized by extremes in ecosystem habitat diversity: submarine canyons, methane seeps, steep escarpments, slump faults and deposits, brine pools, intense oxygen minima, continental freshwater flows, deep-living corals, and now, for the last few decades, O&G activities. Likewise, the margins are transition zones between food-rich near-shore habitats replete with nutrients, plankton, and dynamic populations, out to cold, dark, depths where food is limited to a slow rain of organic particulate detritus from the surface and the substrate is predominantly mud. The biomass of the biota declines exponentially along this food-controlled gradient across typical continental slopes, but biodiversity does not: oddly, it often increases to a mid-depth (1 to 2 km) maximum. The variations in biodiversity are complicated by the unpredictable sequence of peculiar habitats (listed above) along the depth gradient within, as well as between, ocean basins. Sites of enrichment such as canyons or seeps tend to decrease within sample diversity, but at the same time such physical and chemical features can increase the total species richness of the habitat. A lurking question is how O&G activities might alter seafloor biodiversity and associated animal community structure. As the deep ecosystem is food-limited and generally soft mud, added organics or solid substrate might be expected to increase biomass and perhaps support opportunities for added species. Persistent and state-of-the-art observations as O&G development continues (along with accidents) will resolve these questions.



Biography
Dr. Gilbert T. Rowe has more than 30 years experience in deep ocean ecological studies and has authored some 130 peer-refereed publications. After gaining degrees at Texas A&M (BS, 64; MS, 66) and Duke (PhD, 68), he spent 10 years at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1968-79) and 8 years at the Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island (1979-87). He then returned to Texas as Head of the Oceanography Dept at TAMU (1987-2002). He joined TAMUs Galveston branch campus (TAMUG) as Head of Marine Biology in 2003. A Regents Professor at TAMU, he is also an elected Fellow of the AAAS and a Fulbright Scholar in Chile. Between 2000 and 2005 Dr. Rowe was the Program Manager of the MMS-supported Deep Gulf of Mexico Benthos (DGOMB) program, a 5.3 million dollar effort involving more than a dozen ocean scientists from around the world. This research resulted in numerous publications in peer-refereed journals, including an issue of Deep-Sea Research II dedicated to the deep GoM. This opus now provides an extensive data base in the NE GoM in an area surrounding the Macondo blowout and oil-spill site in Mississippi Canyon Block 252. This baseline data will help determine the actual effects of oil, gas and dispersant on pristine seafloor communities. Rowes body of work has made significant strides in fundamental understanding of the relationships between organic-matter input on biodiversity, animal zonation patterns, total biomass, and sediment community respiration. The food-web models developed by Rowe are contributing to a better understanding of the complexities of deep-ocean sustainability.

The SUT was founded to promote the further understanding of the underwater environment and to encourage cross-fertilization and dissemination of ideas, experience and information between workers in academic research, applied research and technology, industry and government development of techniques and tools to explore and study oceans, proper economic and sociological use of our resources in and beneath the oceans further education of scientists and technologists to maintain high standards in marine science and technology.

This multi-disciplinary learned Society brings together organizations and individuals with a common interest in underwater technology, ocean science and offshore engineering. The SUT was founded in 1966 and has members from more than 30 countries, including engineers, scientists, other professionals, and students working in these areas.