|
In October the research network International Research Consortium on Continental Margins (IRCCM) under IUB’s lead started a new research project on biomonitoring of cold water coral reefs in the vicinity of oil exploration sites. The aim of the 1.2 million euro project financed by the Norwegian company Statoil is to develop new monitoring and ecosystem modelling approaches for risk assessment in the off-shore industry.
[
Oct
17, 2006]
Research site is the Tisler cold water coral reef in the Skagerrak, which was placed under environmental protection by the Norwegian government in 2003. As part of the EU HERMES project (Hotspot Ecosystem Research on the Margins of European Seas) it is managed by HERMES partner Tjärnö Marine Biological Laboratory (TMBL) and will host IUB’s second deep-sea online observatory.
The project partners will investigate the effect of physical and chemical disturbance of cold water corals by particle plumes of artificial origin, which enter the reef via bottom currents. New optical monitoring technologies developed by Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and IUB will explore the reef in situ by using remotely and online operated deep-sea robots, one of them IUB’s online observatory. The biomonitoring studies will be complemented with laboratory experiments on the influence of microbial communities on the corals by Bremen’s Max Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology as well as the development of a new sediment transport-ecosystem model in collaboration with the HERMES partner Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO).
The Tisler cold water coral reef of about two kilometers length is situated at the Norwegian-Swedish border in 74 to 155 depth. Thought to be more than 1000 years old, it is the only known reef for yellow Lophelia corals at this depth. These corals provide important habitats for many other animals, including sea fans, sponges, worms, starfish, sea urchins, and crustaceans. In species diversity comparable to tropical coral reefs the Tisler reef also serves as important spawning and nursery grounds for many fish species, including some commercial ones such as redfish. Currently the reef is mainly endangered by the fishing industry.
Background
Drilling for oil and natural gas from the seabed is significantly more costly than drilling on land, due to engineering and transportation challenges in the marine environment. But as terrestrial petroleum supplies near or exceed their peak production, the hunt for oil and natural gas is increasingly taking place in the deep sea. As one of the most important prerequisites for a thriving economy in Europe is secure energy supply, the oceans therefore will become increasingly important. With this expansion in offshore exploration and development, the conflict potential with other resource users increases, as do environmental concerns related to the danger of oil pollution.
Therefore off-shore ocean exploration and monitoring is a major task for oil and gas industry. As one target program of IRCCM and in particular of IUB OceanLab is bio-geo ocean resource management, the new project will intensify the co-operation between science and industry and allow a combination of both, the development of new technologies and basic research. The project coordinator, Laurenz Thomsen is Professor for Marine Geosciences at IUB and affiliate Professor for biological oceanography at the University of Washington, Seattle.
International Research Consortium on Continental Margins (IRCCM, www.irccm.de):
Scientific Partners:
International University Bremen, www.iu-bremen.de
University of Bremen www.uni-bremen.de
Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology www.mpi-bremen.de
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research www.awi-bremerhaven.de
IfM-GEOMAR Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences www.ifm-geomar.de
Rice University (Texas) www.rice.edu
University of Washington (Seattle) www.washington.edu
University of New Hampshire www.unh.edu
Industrial Partners:
Integrated Exploration Systems (IES) www.iesgmbh.eu
Ölkonzern StatOil www.statoil.com
Associate Partners:
French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea Ifremer (Brest) www.ifremer.fr
National Oceanography Centre (Southampton) www.noc.soton.ac.uk
Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg www.tu-harburg.de
|
