Multi-year seabed environmental baseline in deep-sea offshore oil prospective areas established using microbial biodiversity.

Microorganisms are the ocean's first responders to marine pollution events, yet baseline studies rarely focus on microbial communities. Temporal and spatial microbial biodiversity baselines were established using bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing of seafloor sediments in a deep-water oil prospective area along the Scotian Slope off Canada's east coast sampled during 2015-2018. Bacterial diversity was generally similar in space and time, with members of the family Woeseiaceae detected consistently in >1 % relative abundance, similar to seabed sediments in other parts of the world. Anomalous biodiversity results at one site featured lower Woeseiaceae as well as higher levels of bacterial groups specifically associated with cold seeps such as Aminicenantes. This was unexpected given that site selection was based on sediment geochemistry not revealing any petroleum hydrocarbons in these locations. This finding highlights the sensitivity and specificity of microbial DNA sequencing in environmental monitoring. Microbiome assessments like this one represent an important strategy for incorporating microbial biodiversity as a new and useful metric for establishing robust environmental baselines that are necessary for understanding ecosystem responses to marine pollution.

Natural attenuation of spilled crude oil by cold-adapted soil bacterial communities at a decommissioned High Arctic oil well site.

Romulus C-42 is a decommissioned oil well on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic, and is the northernmost well to have produced oil and gas anywhere in the world. The remote site has been untouched since a crude oil spill in 1972, offering a rare opportunity to examine natural attenuation in Arctic soils >40 years after a pollution event. Bacterial community composition in crude oil contaminated soils was significantly different from adjacent background soils. Two members of the genus Rhodanobacter (Alphaproteobacteria) were found consistently in contaminated soils, whereas two members of the genus Sphingomonas (Gammaproteobacteria) appeared opposite to each other, one consistently within the oil contaminated soil and the other consistently in non-oil contaminated soils. GC of soil hydrocarbon extracts revealed moderate levels of biodegradation relative to the original oil produced in 1972. Despite conditions permissive for bacterial activity (>0 °C) being limited to only a few months each year, natural attenuation by cold adapted soil microbial communities has taken place since the oil spill over 40 years ago. Rhodanobacter and Sphingomonas lineages are associated with contaminated and baseline conditions in this extreme environment, revealing the utility of bacterial diversity measurements for assessing long-term responses of Arctic soils to pollution. ORIGINALITY-SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Romulus C-42, the northernmost onshore drilling well in the world, was decommissioned following a small crude oil spill in 1972. Soil bacterial diversity profiles obtained >40 years later revealed significant differences in oil contaminated soils relative to adjacent non-oil contaminated background soils, consistent with evidence for moderate biodegradation of spilled crude oil having taken place since 1972. The results indicate that microbial diversity profiling is an effective tool for assessing natural attenuation in remote High Arctic soils with a history of oil pollution.