Responses of an abyssal meiobenthic community to short-term burial with crushed nodule particles in the south-east Pacific

Mevenkamp, Lisa; Guilini, Katja; Boetius, Antje; De Grave, Johan; Laforce, Brecht; Vandenberghe, Dimitri; Vincze, Laszlo; Vanreusel, Ann

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-16-2329-2019

Articles | Volume 16, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-16-2329-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Assessing environmental impacts of deep-sea mining...

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-16-2329-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 11

Research article

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06 Jun 2019

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 06 Jun 2019

Responses of an abyssal meiobenthic community to short-term burial with crushed nodule particles in the south-east Pacific

Lisa Mevenkamp, Katja Guilini, Antje Boetius, Johan De Grave, Brecht Laforce, Dimitri Vandenberghe, Laszlo Vincze, and Ann Vanreusel

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Final revised paper (published on 06 Jun 2019)
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Preprint (discussion started on 07 Dec 2018)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Reviewer’s comments on manuscript BG-2018-489', Rahul Sharma, 22 Jan 2019
- AC1: 'Response to referee #1', Lisa Mevenkamp, 07 Mar 2019
RC2: 'Review of Mevenkamp et al.Response of an abyssal meiobenthic community to short-term burial with crushed nodule particles in the SE Pacific.', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Jan 2019
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer #2', Lisa Mevenkamp, 07 Mar 2019
RC3: 'Comments on manuscript BG-2018-489', Anonymous Referee #3, 28 Jan 2019
- AC3: 'Response to reviewer #3', Lisa Mevenkamp, 07 Mar 2019

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (22 Mar 2019) by Tina Treude

AR by Lisa Mevenkamp on behalf of the Authors (25 Mar 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (02 Apr 2019) by Tina Treude

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (15 Apr 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Page 1, line 16: Change to “at the seafloor of the Peru Basin”
Page 2, Line 10: You may want to say that nodules in the Peru Basin are not commercially exploitable.
Page 2, line 11: Do you mean shear stress instead of force?
Page 2, line 14: Insert “and transport of nodules”
Page 2, line 24: Why not cite Alenyik et al. (2017) here who modelled sedimentation rates? You’re shifting between resuspension and sedimentation that may be confusing to the reader.
Page 3, line 2: change to “characterized”
Page 3, line 14: Change to “larger organism”
Page 3, line 17: Change to “what thickness”
Page 3, line 18: Change to “evokes meiofaunal responses in the deep sea, and…”
Page 3, line 19: Change to “over short-term timescales”.
Page 3, line 32: delete comma after depth.
Page 3, line 34: Change to “as well as their vertical structuring in the sediments after eleven days of incubation were assessed”
Page 4, line 4: deep sea, not deep-sea.
Page 4, line 12: Change to “, and these served as experimental controls”
Page 4, line 18: I would remove lines 18-21 and place them after “(Figure 1C)…” in line 14.
Page 6, Line 1: Change to “The meiobenthos were…”
Page 6, line 4: Change to “…of De Grisse (1969)”
Page 6, Line 13: Change to “…was carried out”
Page 6, Line 15: Elemental analyser
Page 6, line 23:Change to “…sample taken from” and then delete “taken” in line 24.
Page 6, line 24: MilliQ water?
Page 7, Line 9: Change to “…with each other. In”
Page 7, Line 18: Change to “…abundance only.”
Page 7, line 23: Change to” Visual interpretation of the results was carried out using multidimensional…”
Page 7, Line 28: Change to “…with a non-parametric Wilcox test if datasets failed parametric assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variances…”
Page 8, Line 8. Change to “treatment”
Page 8, Line 11: Change to “…the C/N ratio remained similar between the nodule sediment substrate”.
Page 10, line 2: Change to “…a similarity level of 92%”
Page 11, Line 8: Change to “…The dominant genera”
Page 11, line 9: Change to “Of the other…”
Page 11, line 14: Change to “branching at a similarity level of 36%”
Page 12, Line 3: Delete commas on either side of “thereby”
Page 12, Line 10: Please describe which clusters these reductions were seen in.
Page 13, Line 9-10: Could the lack of a difference in the copper burden in the nodule treatment be due to the animals in the nodule substrate treatment being dead and just not taking up copper? This should be discussed.
Page 15, Line 6: Add a comma after reference.
Page 15, Line 13: Was the reduced C-uptake following 0.5cm or 0.1cm of deposition?
Page 15, Line 14: Change to “…reported”
Page 15, Line 18: Change to non-natural substrate.
Page 15, Line 21: Change context to scenarios.
Page 15, Line 27: Change to “…diversity in our treatments”.
Page 16, Line 1: Change to “assemblages to be…”
Page 16, Line 12: Change to “abyssal deep sea”
Page 16, Line 17: Add comma after closed bracket of reference.
Page 16, Line 22: Change to “A study by…”
Page 16, Line 22: In terms of communities, by specific about what changed. Was it diversity, abundance?
Page 16, Line 22: Change to “…strong but small-scale..”
Page 16, Line 27: Change to “underlie”.
Page 17, Line 4: I think you need to discuss a little the possible effect of nematode death on the copper burden responses. If the nematodes were all dead in the nodule substrate treatment, then there would be no uptake of copper into their tissues and this may have been the reason for the lack of a difference between the nodule and control treatments. You should discuss this a little.
Page 17, Line 7: Change to “…levels of trace metals in the porewater returned…”
Page 17, Line 10: Add comma after “processes”.
Page 17, Line 12: Change to “contents”.
Page 17, Line 13: Change to “mining-related alterations”.
Page 17, Line 15: Change to “…implies that deposited..”
Page 17, line 21-22: You didn’t vary thicknesses of the nodule layer so I would take this out.
Page 17, line 25: Change to “…was not detected”.
Page 17, line 29: Change to “…assessments of fauna in..”
Page 17, Line 30: Change to “…on the benthos”.

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RR by Rahul Sharma (18 Apr 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of replies by authors Lisa Mavenkemp et al on ‘Response of … nodule particles … SE Pacific’.
Journal /Manuscript no.: Biogeosciences / BG-2018-489
Reviewer: (Dr.) Rahul Sharma

Comment 1: Having carefully seen the comments of all the reviewers, one thing is common that the ‘source’ of nodule particles being deposited in such concentrations over a restricted (enclosed) area in real life mining conditions in unclear (and so is the purpose of this experiment). As all the reviewers have pointed out and it is known from literature, that abraded nodule particles dispersed in the sediment plume could settle over a large area and get diluted due to mixing with sediment particles, as against the procedure used in this experiment.

Comment 2: From the description of the experiment, it is clear that it was conducted over a limited (enclosed) area for a short duration (11 days) and to my mind the results have shown positive impacts in terms of no metal accumulation, upward movement of meiofauna-instead of mortality due to smothering (unless there is an issue of preservation/sampling as suggested by one of the reviewers).

Comment 3: It is well known that any human interference into natural processes would lead to some impact. However, it is not necessary to approach every impact assessment study with a fixed mind of proving that all responses ‘have to be’ negative. There is always a difference between short term and long term response wherein positive or neutral response is possible and needs to be acknowledged by the scientists.

Comment 4: Since this experiment is planned as a short term one, results should be expressed as such, which in itself is a contribution to understanding the response of nature to any disturbance. Merely reporting that the impacts of burial are limited (without reporting the actual response) and that long term studies are required, nothing new is being contributed through this experiment and paper.

Comment 5: I still do not agree with the concept of addressing newly introduced material as ‘substrate’. However, I leave it to the authors to provide proper explanation if they want to keep it.

Suggestion: The experiment conducted by the researchers is a new approach to the possible impacts of mining of deep-sea minerals and the results should be published. I suggest that the authors should highlight this new approach and report the results ‘as they are’, because this has not been done before.

Recommendation: The comments above are not meant to discourage the authors but to have a fresh look at the results. The paper may be published after addressing the comments above.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (19 Apr 2019) by Tina Treude

AR by Lisa Mevenkamp on behalf of the Authors (03 May 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (15 May 2019) by Tina Treude

AR by Lisa Mevenkamp on behalf of the Authors (22 May 2019) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

To elucidate the potential effects of crushed nodule particle deposition on abyssal meiobenthos, we covered abyssal soft sediment in the Peru Basin (4200 m depth) with approximately 2 cm of this nodule material for 11 d. About half of the meiobenthos migrated from the sediment into the added material, and nematode feeding type proportions in that added layer were altered. These results considerably contribute to our understanding of the short-term responses of deep-sea meiobenthos to burial.