The risk of a major marine fuel spill in Antarctic waters is increasing, yet there are currently no standard or suitable response methods under extreme Antarctic conditions. Fuel dispersants may present a possible solution, however little data exist on the toxicity of dispersants or fuels to Antarctic species, thereby preventing informed management decisions. Larval development toxicity tests using 3 life history stages of the Antarctic sea urchin Sterechinus neumayeri were completed to assess the toxicity of physically dispersed, chemically dispersed and dispersant only water accommodated fractions of an intermediate fuel oil (IFO 180) and the chemical dispersant Slickgone NS. Despite much lower total petroleum hydrocarbon concentrations, physically dispersed fuels contained higher proportions of low to intermediate weight carbon compounds and were generally at least an order of magnitude more toxic than chemically dispersed fuels. Based on EC50 values, the embryonic unhatched blastula life stage was the least affected by fuels and dispersants, while the larval 4-armed pluteus stage was the most sensitive. The present study is the first to investigate the possible implications of the use of fuel dispersants for fuel spill response in Antarctica. The results indicate that the use of a fuel dispersant did not increase the hydrocarbon toxicity of IFO 180 to the early life stages of Antarctic sea urchins, relative to physical dispersal. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 04 November 2016.
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