Cook Plant preoperational studies 1970 / John C. Ayers ... [et al.].

A.7 Study of Benthic Organisms

In order that the benthos record relative to the Cook Plant may be as
complete as possible, the benthos results from our surveys prior to the
beginning of the present detailed biological surveys have been assembled and
are here reported.
The surveys were taken for different purposes and over different grids
of sampling stations and there is only limited comparability among them. The
survey of 13 July 1966 was part of a general orientation survey which was
reported in pages 12-16 of Part I of our report series. The survey of 25 April
1969 was made to determine the sampling depths that define the waveswept
"sterile zone" close to the beach; this survey was reported in pages 52-66 of
Part IV of our report series. These surveys have comparability only insofar
as the "sterile zone" is concerned.
The COOK station data of 4 October 1969, 26 April 1970, and 6 June 1970
involved the same sampling location as station PPP-14 of the July 1966 survey.
This location is also station DC-3 of our present detailed surveys (for which
no results are yet available). No station of the 25 April 1969 survey (Table
10) is comparable to this location.
We start the accumulation of the Cook annual cycle of benthos abundance
by the following compiled from Tables 11 and 12, which were all collected by
the Ponar grab sampler and washed through 0.5 mm screen.
Station
and date Amphipods igochaetes Sphaeriidae Tendipidae Others
26 IV 70 286/m2 1,165/m2 399/m2 304/m2 26/m2
COOK Leeches
6 VI 70 1,504 243 43 52 0
COOK
13 VII 66 316 101 21 208 0
PPP-14
4 X 69 1,965 939 521 313 0
COOK

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