SESSION SUMMARY: BENTHIC ECOLOGY - SOFT SUBSTRATA 



Les Watling 



Darling Marine Center 



University of Maine 



Walpole, Maine 04573 



The history of soft bottom benthic studies in the Gulf of 

 Maine has been a long one. The earliest investigations were 

 carried out by fisheries biologists interested in the bottom as a 

 source of food for fishes. All were of a taxonomic nature and 

 essentially came to an end in the late 1880 's. In the 1950 's and 

 1960 's fisheries scientists again sampled the bottom of the Gulf 

 of Maine, this time as opportunists utilizing surface ships in- 

 volved in geological studies. With the exception of a single 

 study published in 1975, no studies of the open Gulf benthos were 

 conducted until the 1980 's when investigations included both the 

 fishery and more narrowly ecological points of view. The latter 

 have just begun to be published and include biogeochemical as 

 well as biological data. Some of this new emphasis is visible in 

 the four papers making up this section. 



Studies of benthic patterns predominate much of the recent 

 work. Macrobenthic patterns, as determined by photographic 

 technigues, are outlined by R. Langton & J. Uzmann, while L. 

 Watling et al . provide an overview of the complex distribution 

 patterns for all benthic species. However, to understand these 

 patterns there is a need for background data on water conditions 

 and food sources. Some of the standard measures, such as total 

 sedimentary organic carbon and nitrogen content, by themselves 

 cannot be used as determinants of sediment nutritional guality. 

 Sampling of the sedimentary regime being fed upon by the 

 suspension feeding sea pens discussed in the chapter by Langton 

 et al., required the development of new technology. See Chapter 

 Four for the method to sample this "fluff" layer, discussed in 

 Mayer et al . 



As the following chapters show, benthic studies in the Gulf 

 of Maine have progressed beyond merely sampling for taxonomic 

 studies, though that is clearly still necessary given the number 

 of new taxa being discovered in the deeper areas. The pattern 

 studies reported on here will finally provide the background for 

 the much needed investigations of production and energy flow. 

 Because of the unique resources that it can bring to bear on 

 these problems, I expect that the National Undersea Research 

 Program will continue to play an important role in the studies of 

 the Gulf of Maine benthos. 



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