Study of the N, P and Si fluxes between fish farm sediment and seawater. Results of simulation experiments employing a benthic chamber under various redox conditions

Abstract

The rapidly expanding industry of marine cage fish farming of sea bream ( Sparus aurata) and sea bass ( Dicentrarchus labrax) in the Mediterranean Sea over the last decade has often had damaging effects on the benthic aquatic environment near the fish farm installations. It has been observed that the food-remains, together with the pellets and metabolic products from fish, frequently form a “nepheloid” sediment layer covering large areas of the seabed. Under these conditions anoxia and/or hypoxia develop and affect benthic communities while the quality of the marine environment deteriorates for long periods, extending even beyond the life span of the fish farm itself. In most cases the affected areas act initially as sediment traps and in a second phase as secondary sources of organic carbon, nutrients and other substances. The aim of this paper is to explore the behaviour of such an affected area under different redox regimes by measuring the fluxes of ammonium, nitrite, nitrate, TDN, phosphate, TDP and silicate between the surface sediment and the overlying waters. To achieve this goal we constructed a prototype benthic chamber capable of sampling considerable quantities of affected undisturbed sediment along with its overlying water. The chamber was transported to the laboratory where simulation experiments reproducing the conditions occurring in nature, including the extreme ones, were carried out and studied carefully. The chamber allows the full and fine control of the dissolved oxygen concentration – and thus of the redox potential – as well as water temperature while subsamples of both water and sediment could be obtained and analysed for a series of chemical substances. The controlled laboratory chamber experiments reproduced four successional phases: 1) deoxygenation, 2) hypoxia, 3) reoxygenation and 4) anoxia. The results showed that even minor changes in the redox conditions at a relatively narrow zone near the water sediment interface have significant impacts on the concentrations of dissolved nitrogen, phosphorus and silicate compounds. With decreasing oxygen supply (phases 1, 2 and 4), the concentrations of ammonium, nitrite, TDN, phosphate, TDP and silicate rapidly increase, those of nitrate decrease. DON and DOP exhibit remarkable fluctuations. During reoxygenation (phase 3) the concentrations of ammonium stabilise, the nitrate concentration decreases while nitrite shows an increasing trend. Decreases in phosphate and silicate concentrations were also observed paralleled by TDP stabilization and DOP increasing trend. TDN shows a relatively small increase while the DON concentration fluctuates significantly.