Due to elevated emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere, oceanic uptake of CO₂ is increasing and the oceanic carbonate system altered in a phenomenon termed Ocean Acidification (OA). How come that in relatively shallow shelf systems like the North Sea, the trend in pH decrease of the open ocean is not followed ? Which geochemical processes contribute to this discrepancy? To answer these questions, the Master student will collect sediments from the Oosterschelde for measuring fluxes of alkalinity, DIC, O₂, dissolved metals and nutrients between the sediment and the overlying water in the presence and absence of larger biota and modelled as a function of biological activity.

Food web studies of the cold-water coral reef community have shown that these are among the most productive benthic ecosystems in the deep sea and hence a comparatively large amount of secondary production is potentially available as food for higher trophic levels such as fish. Models of the food web structure of cold-water coral communities at various sites in the northeast Atlantic have been developed in our lab using food web modeling. These models will be extended with fish compartments to quantify the predation pressure of fish on the reef community.

Most people associate corals with warm tropical waters, but also the deep sea harbors extensive coral reefs. These cold-water corals form extensive 3-dimensional structures that provide a habitat for a very rich community of stony corals, soft corals, sponges, bivalves, polychaetes, shrimps and fish. In this project, the student is challenged to develop a mathematical model of trophic and non-trophic interactions between the key components of the cold-water coral reef ecosystem.