Scallops as sentinel organisms for off-shore environmental effects monitoring

Abstract

From the Abstract: “Two environmental effects monitoring approaches were tested at the Hibernia offshore oil porduction field. Both methods use bivalves as sentinel organisms for assessing operational waste bioavailability, and for relating contaminant exposure and dose to the onset of biological effects. Bivalve cages containing caged Icelandic and sea scallops and blue mussels were placed on the seabed at different distances to the Hibernia platform. Lethal and sublethal (shell and tissue growth) impacts and hydrocarbon body burden measurements were used to assess the spatial extent of contamination and benthic impacts from drilling activities. The second mentoring approach utilized an in situ biological effect monitoring system (HABITRAP) that provided daily measurement of drilling waste exposure (barium and hydrocarbon sedimentation rate) and bivalve biodepostiion rate, a measure known to be sensitive to the presence of drilling wastes. …Observations  of bivalve reponses to temporal and spatial variations in the metal and hydrocarbon contaminants are compared with the results of benthic community analysis.”