Abstract

Abstract. 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.

Highlights

  • The last decade has witnessed a tremendous progress in our knowledge about “framework-building cold-water corals” (CWC) as their role as ecosystem engineers creating highly diverse ecosystems in water depths far beyond the shelf edge is becoming more and more obvious (Roberts et al, 2009)

  • The scope of the present study is to describe this extensive (> 40 km2) CWC province with respect to morphology, the megafaunal community, and the oceanographic setting and to put it into a larger framework analyzing the overall forcing factors controlling its development

  • This belt of parallel elongated mounds is situated between the escarpment and the continuous drift deposit, with a few stratified sediment bodies occurring between the mounds

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Summary

Introduction

The last decade has witnessed a tremendous progress in our knowledge about “framework-building cold-water corals” (CWC) as their role as ecosystem engineers creating highly diverse ecosystems in water depths far beyond the shelf edge is becoming more and more obvious (Roberts et al, 2009). The availability of advanced deep-sea technologies (e.g., remotely operated vehicles) greatly supported the discovery and investigation of large, thriving and (so far) unknown CWC ecosystems in remote places. Successful studies such as those performed off Mauritania (Colman et al, 2005), off Angola (Le Guilloux et al, 2009), and in various parts of the Mediterranean. Hebbeln et al.: Environmental forcing of the Campeche cold-water coral province

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