| Summary: | Trabajo presentado en el PRIMO 17 (Pollutant Responses in Marine Organisms), celebrado en Faro (Portugal) del 5 al 8 de mayo de 2013. The urgent necessity to avoid the hazards derived from global climate change and ocean acidification has led governments and scientific community to explore and study new strategies to decrease the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. One of the international renowned mitigation measures proposed to reduce the concentration of atmospheric CO2, is the capture and storage of this gas in marine stable geological formations. The main risk associated to this option is the leakages of retained CO2, which could cause important environmental perturbation on marine ecosystems. This work focus to quantify the potential biological effects in short term derived from CO2 leakages on marine organisms. To this end, a lab scale experiment involving direct release of CO2 was conducted using the model benthic organism Ruditapes philippinarum. Bivalves were exposed during 10 days to sediment samples, collected in three different areas and following a metal concentration gradient, under established pH conditions (8.0-‐6.0). Survival and burrowing activity were employed as endpoint. After 10 days of exposure, 100% mortality was observed at pH 6.0. Non significant differences for mortality rate were found in control (7.9) treatment between the sediment samples. Mortality rate was significant at 7.0 and 6.5pH treatments depending on metal concentration in sediment. Burrowing activity was affected by pH, decreasing the activity at low pH levels and was influenced by sediment characteristics. These results indicate that CO2 leakages might provoke an increasing of sediment toxicity linked to metal mobilisation. Peer Reviewed
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