Environmental forcing of the Campeche cold-water coral province, southern Gulf of Mexico

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2014-04-07Author
Hebbeln, Dierk
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Wienberg, Claudia
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Wintersteller, P.
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Freiwald, Andre
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Becker, M.
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Beuck, Lydia
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Dullo, C.
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Eberli, G. P.
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Glogowski, S.
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Matos, L.
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Forster, N.
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Reyes-Bonilla, H.
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Taviani, Marco
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https://hdl.handle.net/1912/6688As published
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-11-1799-2014DOI
10.5194/bg-11-1799-2014Abstract
With an extension of > 40 km2 the recently discovered Campeche cold-water coral province located at the northeastern rim of the Campeche Bank in the southern Gulf of Mexico belongs to the largest coherent cold-water coral areas discovered so far. The Campeche province consists of numerous 20–40 m-high elongated coral mounds that are developed in intermediate water depths of 500 to 600 m. The mounds are colonized by a vivid cold-water coral ecosystem that covers the upper flanks and summits. The rich coral community is dominated by the framework-building Scleractinia Enallopsammia profunda and Lophelia pertusa, while the associated benthic megafauna shows a rather scarce occurrence. The recent environmental setting is characterized by a high surface water production caused by a local upwelling center and a dynamic bottom-water regime comprising vigorous bottom currents, obvious temporal variability, and strong density contrasts, which all together provide optimal conditions for the growth of cold-water corals. This setting – potentially supported by the diel vertical migration of zooplankton in the Campeche area – controls the delivering of food particles to the corals. The Campeche cold-water coral province is, thus, an excellent example highlighting the importance of the oceanographic setting in securing the food supply for the development of large and vivid cold-water coral ecosystems.
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© The Author(s), 2014. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Biogeosciences 11 (2014): 1799-1815, doi:10.5194/bg-11-1799-2014.
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Biogeosciences 11 (2014): 1799-1815The following license files are associated with this item: