Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2007. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Marine Pollution Bulletin 54 (2007): 955-962, doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2007.02.015.
Description:
In September 1969,the Florida barge spilled 700,000 L of No. 2 fuel oil into the salt
marsh sediments of Wild Harbor (Buzzards Bay, MA). Today the aboveground
environment appears unaffected, but a substantial amount of moderately degraded petroleum
still remains 8 to 20 cm below the surface. The salt marsh fiddler crabs, Uca pugnax, which
burrow into the sediments at depths of 5 to 25 cm, are chronically exposed to the spilled oil.
Behavioral studies conducted with U. pugnax from Wild Harbor and a control site, Great
Sippewissett marsh, found that crabs exposed to the oil avoided burrowing into oiled layers,
suffered delayed escape responses, lowered feeding rates, and lower densities. The oil
residues are therefore biologically active and affect U. pugnax populations. Our results add new knowledge about long-term consequences of spilled oil, a dimension that should be included when assessing oil-impacted areas and developing management plans designed to
restore, rehabilitate, or replace impacted areas.
Description:
This work was funded by a grant from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea
Grant Program, under grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
U.S. Department of Commerce, under Grant No. NA16RG2273, project no. R/P-73.
Additional support was provided by funding from the NSF funded Research Experience for
Undergraduates program, award 0453292, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator
Award (N00014-04-01-0029) to C. Reddy, and an USEPA Science to Achieve Results
Graduate Fellowship (FP91661801) to E. Peacock.
Keywords:
Oil pollution
;
Fiddler crabs
;
Salt marsh
;
No. 2 fuel oil
;
Florida
;
Petroleum hydrocarbons
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
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