This award supports a one year project with Dr. J. Christensen of Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences that will attempt to make respiration rate measurements of selected benthic infauna. The measurement of benthic respiration rates is critical to our understanding of the consumption of organic carbon in shelf and near shore waters. However, biological rates are some of the most difficult environmental measurements to make, and the investigators will apply a sensitive biochemical assay for respiration, the measurement of electron transport system (ETS) activity. The ETS measurements will be calibrated with laboratory oxygen consumption measurements and respiration under a range of environmental conditions will be investigated. The field study will be done in the near shore waters of southern Maine.
