The long-term development of cold-water coral mounds in the NE-Atlantic

Abstract

Cold-water corals are distributed all over the world's oceans where they form a high variety of ecosystems depending on their specific environment. This study is dealing with so called cold-water coral mounds that are mainly composed of fragments of cold-water corals and hemipelagic mud that is baffled in between the coral branches. Changes of the environment have a direct effect on coral growth and thus on mound growth. This study aims to unravel the environmental factors that influence mound growth in different latitudes and during different global climate periods. For this purpose, two cold-water coral mounds along the East Atlantic margin were selected: Galway Mound in the in the Porcupine Seabight on the Irish continental margin at ~51°N latitude and a coral mound of the Banda Mound Province on the Mauritanian margin at ~17°N.