09:50 〜 10:15
[MIS18-04] Hydrocarbons Released Naturally from the Seafloor Fuel Complex and Unique Biological Communities
★Invited Papers
キーワード：Cold Seeps, Methane Hydrates, Chemosynthesis, Benthic Ecology, Biological Communities, Succession
Hydrocarbon seeps were discovered shortly after hydrothermal vents in the 1970’s, and they provided yet more evidence of the ability of organisms to thrive far removed from energy derived from sunlight, by utilizing chemosynthesis. In the deep sea especially, seafloor areas where hydrocarbons are released into the water column house extremely high concentrations of animal biomass compared to the surrounding environment as well as many endemic animals. Free-living chemosynthetic bacteria and animals which host chemosynthetic bacteria can obtain energy directly from hydrocarbons through the anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) and/or indirectly from the hydrogen sulfide created during AOM. Since their discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of seeps have been discovered so far along both active and passive margins suggesting they may be a common occurrence along continental margins throughout the world. This talk will briefly go over the history of biological studies at hydrocarbon-rich seafloor habitat as well as the chemical and biological processes that are involved in chemosynthesis there. I will summarize the general patterns of methane-seep community colonization and succession and environmental drivers of community differences among individual habitats. I will also discuss the main attributes that define these communities as well as the dominant organisms associated with seeps in different geological provinces. The talk will close with a few case studies on seep communities from my past work, primarily in the Gulf of Mexico and Japan, and the most recent work and future directions of exploration being pursued by the global scientific community.