Oil carbon entered the coastal planktonic food web during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

By W. Graham, Robert H. Condon, R. Carmichael, I. D’Ambra, H. K. Patterson, L. Linn, F. Hernandez. 2010

216 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was unprecedented in total loading of petroleum hydrocarbons accidentally released to a marine ecosystem. Controversial application of chemical dispersants presumably accelerated microbial consumption of oil components, especially in warm Gulf of Mexico surface waters. We employed δ13C as a tracer of oil-derived carbon to resolve two periods of isotopic carbon depletion in two plankton size classes. Carbon depletion was coincident with the arrival of surface oil slicks in the far northern Gulf, and demonstrated that subsurface oil carbon was incorporated into the plankton food web.

Subfields: Ecology, Oceanography, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c9367eca3c69cb44c92d31a3e99c6e38e851601d

How researchers see this paper

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In Ecology

1. U. Passow

In Oceanography

1. Kai Ziervogel
2. V. Asper
3. A. Diercks
4. U. Passow
5. D. Thornton

Citations in the corpus

• Marine snow formation in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (2012, background): “Currently it is unknown how the fossil carbon entered the food web after the Deepwater Horizon spill (Graham et al 2010), however, planktonic grazing on oil-derived marine snow could represent an efficient pathway for this carbon to enter higher trophic levels.”