Oceanographic moorings as year-round laboratories for investigating growth performance and settlement dynamics in the Antarctic scallop

• Published in: PeerJ
• Main Authors: Schiaparelli, Stefano, Aliani, Stefano
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: PubMed Central 2019
• Subjects: Adamussium colbecki; Antarctica; Caging; Growth; Monitoring; Mooring; Ross sea; Settlement; Time-series; Antarc*; Antarctic; Ross Sea
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6373; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30923647; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6431546/

Oceanographic moorings (OMs) are standard marine platforms composed of wires, buoys, weights and instruments, and are used as in situ observatories to record water column properties. However, OMs are also comprised of hard substrates on which a variety of invertebrates can settle when they encounter these structures along their dispersal routes. In this contribution, we studied the fouling communities found on two OMs deployed in the Ross Sea (Antarctica). Furthermore, a cage containing the Antarctic scallop Adamussium colbecki (E. A. Smith, 1902) was incorporated in the OM. The growth of the caged A. colbecki were evaluated after 1 year and their shells used as biological proxy for seawater temperature and salinity.