- Language: English
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Summary
During the ABIDES and ABRIC Projects, Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) dives were conducted along the Blanes Canyon (NW Mediterranean) with the aim of exploring the impact of bottom trawling activities on surface sediments and deep benthic communities. Cold Water Corals (CWCs) and other deep-sea marine benthic communities were discovered at numerous canyon locations, always associated with the presence of exposed rocky outcrops. These benthic communities create three-dimensional living structures, similar to those of vegetation forest in land, and have been recently grouped under the general term of “Marine Animal Forests” (MAFs). The occurrence of large communities of MAFs in this canyon had not been documented before (except for few dredged samples of CWCs), and represented an unexpected finding. The best developed communities were found at the canyon head region on steep (i.e., vertical and overhanging) canyon walls, at the western canyon flank, at depths ranging from ~900 to ~500 m depth. However, the detailed spatial distribution of the fishing pressure in Blanes Canyon indicates that these MAF communities are completely surrounded by active fishing grounds. The indirect impacts of bottom trawling on them by smothering (i.e., exposing them to elevated fluxes of poorly nutritive resuspended particles) might have unforeseen consequences. To evaluate those, several benthic species were collected during the ROV dives and have been kept in aquaria and recurrently exposed to turbid water inputs, replicating the effects of daily trawling activities. Since the deep-sea fishing activities conducted in the Blanes Canyon over the past decades are similar to the fisheries practiced along the entire Mediterranean margin, other deep-sea MAF communities already found (or yet to be discovered) in trawled submarine canyons might be facing the same impacts.
Brief biography
Scientific Researcher at the Institut de Ciències del Mar of Barcelona (CSIC). He received a degree in Geological Sciences at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 1992 and a PhD in Marine Sciences from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in 1998. In 1999, he received a Fulbright grant to conduct a 2-year post-doctoral research at the School of Oceanography of the University of Washington. In 2001, he returned to the Institut de Ciències del Mar of Barcelona after obtaining a 5-years "Ramón y Cajal" tenure-track position, and in 2005 he became a Tenured Scientist. In 2009 he was promoted to Scientific Researcher. The general focus of his research is the study of the contemporary sedimentary dynamics in the marine environment to understand the mechanisms responsible for the off-shelf and cross- and along-margin sediment transport, with a special interest in the role that submarine canyons play as preferential conduits for the export of particles and associated constituents from shallow to deep regions. His studies have had a significant inter-disciplinary component, with the aim of assessing the consequences of specific sedimentary processes in the marine ecosystem. Lately, the focus of his research has been addressed to understand the role of deep-sea bottom trawling activities in the sediment resuspension and dispersal in continental slope environments. He has published 148 scientific articles and 14 book chapters and participated in more than 300 communications to meetings, 30 of them as an invited speaker.