Soft sediment assemblages at Casey Station: Brown Bay Grid - samples taken along a pollution gradient.

Brief description

A survey of macrobenthic assemblages in soft-sediments was done at Casey Station, East Antarctica. Samples were taken along four transects in Brown Bay, along a pollution gradient that has its source at an abandoned waste tip on the shore of Brown Bay. The transects were up to 300 M long and there were 9 sampling stations on each transect except for transect four which had only 4 sampling stations. Sampling stations were at the following distances from the shoreline and tip site: 10 m, 20 m, 30 m, 40 m, 50 m, 100 m, 150 m, 200 m, and 300 m. Two cores of the soft-sediment assemblages were taken at each sampling station and two cores for analysis of heavy metals and hydrocarbons.

Samples were taken by divers using hand-held corers (fauna core size - 10 cm diameter by 10 cm deep; sediment analysis cores - 5 cm diam. by 10 cm deep). The aims were: 1) to determine the nature and extent of the contamination gradient in front of the tip site and; 2) to determine if there was a corresponding response in the soft-sediment assemblages along the contamination gradient.

A total of 62 samples of soft-sediment assemblages and 62 samples for heavy metal and hydrocarbon analysis were taken. Sediment grain size was also examined at each sampling point. The benthic diatom communities were also analysed in each sample.

Links to ASAC 1100.

The fields in this dataset are:

Distance
Position
Site and replicate
Species

Lineage

Progress Code: completed

Statement: Gammarid, Isopod, gastropod faunas identified at the Australian Museum. Remaining faunas identified by J. Stark. Diatoms identified by L. Cunningham.

2018-09-25 - The original datasheet was reformatted to fit OBIS/GBFI/IPT Biodiversity.AQ standardS. The new datasheet 'caseySurvey_BBGinfauna.csv" provides datasetID, occurrenceID, eventID, locality, locationID, decimalLatitude, decimalLongitude, continent, countryCode, eventDate, occurrenceStatus, organismQuantity, organismQuantityType, basisOfRecord, institutionCode, and protocol. The lowest taxonomical rank of the species identified that could be determined is provided, after matched in WoRMS (World Register of Marine Species).