A close-up of the coral Lophelia pertusa from an undersea canyon in the Gulf of Mexico at approximately 450 meters (1,476 feet) depth in a photo taken by a deep-sea rover in Sept., 2008. Lophelia II 2009: Deepwater Coral Expedition: Reefs, Rigs, and Wrecks

By Emily Sohn
Fri Jun 18, 2010 10:29 AM ET Unlike the well-publicized turmoil of pelicans, turtles, fish and other obvious animal victims of the Gulf oil spill, the fate of corals more than 1,000 feet below the surface remains unknown. While scientists haven’t been able to visit the Gulf’s deep-water coral since oil started gushing under water in April, research elsewhere is revealing new details about how the corals respond to environmental stresses. One of the latest studies out of Australia found that, much like people, some corals have stronger immune systems that help them resist stress and fight diseases. Along with other ongoing research in the Gulf, the findings should help scientists predict what’s going to happen to the corals that now lie beneath massive plumes of oil. For now, the experts are left to worry. “There are increasing reports from some colleagues out at sea right now who are finding subsurface oil plumes at depth that are moving around,” said Erik Cordes, a marine ecologist at Temple University in Philadelphia. “Those are the things that are starting to scare us.”… “If this had happened on a shallow-water reef, there would be a lot more data to evaluate the impact,” Cordes said. “We’re kind of playing catch-up. We’re trying to come up to speed very quickly on this.” The new Australian study might help. In samples of more than 15 families of coral that live in the Great Barrier Reef, some closely related to Lophelia pertusa, the researcher team pinpointed three ways that corals fight back against diseases and other stresses. Their results showed both that some types of coral invested more in immune systems, and that corals with stronger immunity were less likely to suffer from disease and bleaching — the loss of color that happens when shallow-water corals lose their life-sustaining symbiotic algae. “For the first time, they’ve shown there’s a relationship between bleaching and immunity,” said Gerald Weissmann, director of the Biotechnology Study Center at the New York University School of Medicine and editor of the FASEB Journal, which published the new study. “They found that the kind of stuff the spill has produced in the Gulf interferes with that immunity.”… “My greatest hope is that we find nothing,” he said. “I would love to go down there and find no impact whatsoever. That’s what I’m holding on to.”

Fate of Gulf’s Deep-Water Corals Unknown