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Science 1 June 1990:
Vol. 248. no. 4959, pp. 1096 - 1099
DOI: 10.1126/science.248.4959.1096
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Articles

Chemosynthetic Mussels at a Brine-Filled Pockmark in the Northern Gulf of Mexico

I. Rosman MacDonald 1, James F. Reilly II 2, Norman L. Guinasso Jr. 1, James M. Brooks 1, Robert S. Carney 3, William A. Bryant 4, and Thomas J. Bright 4

1 Geochemical and Environmental Research Group, Texas A&M University, 10 South Graham Road, College Station, TX 77845
2 Ensearch Exploration Inc., 1601 Elm Street, Suite 1200, Dallas, TX 75221
3 Coastal Ecology Institute, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803
4 Texas A&M University, Department of Oceanography, College Station, TX 77843

A large (540 square meters) bed of Bathymodiolus n. sp. (Mytilidae: Bivalvia) rings a pool of hypersaline (121.35 practical salinity units) brine at a water depth of 650 meters on the continental slope south of Louisiana. The anoxic brine (dissolved oxygen le0.17 milliliters per liter) contains high concentrations of methane, which nourishes methanotrophic symbionts in the mussels. The brine, which originates from a salt-cored diapir that penetrates to within 500 meters ofthe sea floor, fills a depression that was evidently excavated by escaping gas. The spatial continuity of the mussel bed indicates that the brine level has remained fairly constant; however, demographic differences between the inner and outer parts of the bed record small fluctuations.


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