Long-term changes in rocky intertidal macrobenthos during the five years after the Hebei Spirit oil spill, Taean, Korea

• Published in: Ocean science journal Vol. 52; no. 1; pp. 103 - 112
• Main Authors: Jung, Yun-Hwan, Park, Henug-Sik, Yoon, Kon-Tak, Kim, Hyung-June, Shim, Won-Joon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Seoul Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute and The Korean Society of Oceanography 01.03.2017; Springer Nature B.V; 한국해양과학기술원
• Subjects: Aquatic Pollution; Brownfields; Community structure; Dominant species; Duration; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Ecosystems; Environmental changes; Long-term changes; Marine & Freshwater Sciences; Marine ecosystems; Oceanography; Oil spills; Ordination; Pollution control; Recovery; Rocky shores; Scaling; Shores; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; Zoobenthos; 해양학; South Korea; macrobenthos; oil spill; recovery; community structure; rocky shore
• ISSN: 1738-5261; 2005-7172
• DOI: 10.1007/s12601-017-0008-5

The Hebei Spirit oil spill reached the west coast of Taean County, Korea, on December 7, 2007. At that time, this was the largest oil spill that had occurred in the country. The incident devastated local marine ecosystems. In this study, we examined changes in these ecosystems and the recovery pattern on impacted rocky shores. Macrobenthos monitoring of polluted and control sites was performed seasonally from January 2008 through October 2013. At polluted sites, ecological indices increased gradually from 2009, thereby providing evidence of recovery. However, the mean density of macrobenthos was still less than 50% of the level at the control site, indicating that the ecological status of the polluted sites has still not recovered to that which prevailed before the oil spill. Although densities of the most dominant species were higher in the control site than in polluted sites, the densities of Lottia spp. and Odostomia aomori were higher in polluted sites. These two taxa were found in lower numbers at the control site, where they were out-competed by Chthamalus challengeri . Nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination divided the macrobenthic community structure into three clusters according to differences in the abundance of dominant species over the 6 years after the oil spill. An ANOSIM test detected significant differences between the polluted and control sites. Consistent long-term differences indicate that complete recovery had not occurred during the duration of our study.