Environmental effects of in-situ oil burning studied

Researchers at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research at Crete, Greece, have installed an ambitious experimental infrastructure to study the effects of in-situ oil burning in the marine environment. Oil burning is sometimes used to mitigate large oil spills, but whereas this method is relatively fast, it comes with risks associated with contaminants that arise from pollution released into the air. The infrastructure consists of experimental units called mesocosms, which are large enclosures that can contain part of the natural environment (in this case water off the Cretan coast, which also contains the plankton community). In these mesocosms, the researchers have installed containers where the oil can be burned, as well as a device that collects the soot that arises from the burning. Effects of the soot on aquatic life can then be studied by depositing the soot into the water in the mesocosms via artificial rain. This infrastructure consequently allows both the study of residues from the burning oil and the effects of soot. In experiments that have focused on the microbial plankton community, the researchers have found marked and rapid shifts in the microbial communities of the contaminated mesocosms. These shifts include higher bacterial activity, including increased activity of hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria that are known to degrade hydrocarbon compounds. Results from this research was recently presented at the Third International Symposium on Aquatic Mesocosm-Based Research, and details on the methods and results can be found in the links below.

This study has received funding from the AQUACOSM-plus project of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 871081.

Sources: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2020/EGU2020-14807.html

Researchgate November 2023, http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.11856.69127