Biogeosciences
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Articles | Volume 22, issue 9
Articles | Volume 22, issue 9
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-2201-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-2201-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 22, issue 9
Research article
 | Highlight paper
 | 
09 May 2025
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 09 May 2025

Cold-water coral mounds are effective carbon sinks in the western Mediterranean Sea

Luis Greiffenhagen, Jürgen Titschack, Claudia Wienberg, Haozhuang Wang, and Dierk Hebbeln

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Editorial statement
This paper discusses the carbon capture by poorly studied cold-water corals. These coral mounds represent a lesser known part of the carbon cycle and the outcomes of the study highlight the importance of these structures for natural carbon capture and storage at the sea floor.
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Short summary
Cold-water coral mounds are large structures on the seabed that are built by corals over thousands of years. They are regarded as carbonate sinks, with a potentially important role in the marine carbon cycle, but more quantitative studies are needed. Using sediment cores, we calculate the amount of carbon that has been stored in two mounds over the last 400 000 years. We provide the first numbers and show that up to 19 times more carbon is accumulated in mounds than on the common seafloor.
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