Marine Sampling Field Manual for Grabs and Box Corers [Version 1]. [SUPERSEDED by DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25607/OBP-918]

Abstract

This Grab and Box Corer Field Manual includes gear designed to sample unconsolidated sediment and organisms on the seafloor. General steps are outlined in Figure 9.1 and described in detail in the sections below. The samples collected by grabs and box corers can be used to derive a range of physical, chemical, and biological parameters (Eleftheriou and Mcintyre 2005), and each of these parameters requires a particular method to process and analyse the sample (Danovaro 2010). In the interest of developing a standard protocol for marine monitoring that is readily accessible to multiple users among various disciplines, this field manual includes only a sub-set of these variables (Table 9.2). These variables were chosen because they can be used by multiple disciplines, are relatively easy to undertake, require minimal specialised equipment or chemicals, and are applicable to ecological indicators in marine monitoring (Hayes et al. 2015). Importantly, the protocol detailed here does not preclude other parameters from being investigated; rather it provides an achievable standard for acquiring fundamental data for monitoring that can be expanded as required to meet additional objectives on a given survey. This field manual does not include methods for sediment contaminant monitoring, as this is considered more applicable to coastal environments and is comprehensively covered elsewhere (Simpson et al. 2005). As activities develop (e.g. deep-sea mining) the scope may be expanded in future field manual versions to encompass sediment contaminant monitoring. Other equipment able to sample sediment is not included in this field manual due to difficulties deploying in deeper waters (e.g. suction samplers) or limited applicability to biological sampling (e.g. gravity, piston, vibrocores) (Eleftheriou and Moore 2005). In addition, multicorers are not explicitly included because small sample volume may preclude the collection of representative biological communities without aggregation (Williams et al. 2017), although we note that multicorer samples can be aggregated and processed as described in this manual. Although they are able to quantify infaunal activity, sedimentology, and biogeochemistry, sediment profile imaging (SPI) is also excluded from this field manual due to the vast differences in equipment requirements and data processing (Aller et al. 2001, Germano et al. 2011) .