Polychaetes from Burdwood Bank: Namuncurá MPA and slope

GENZANO, G; BREMEC, C. S.; PUENTE TAPIA, A; SCHEJTER, L. ; ELÍAS, R; CALLA, S

Simposio; V Simposio Latinoamericano de Polychaeta; 2018

The first open-sea (non-coastal) Marine Protected Area in Argentina, named ?Namuncurá? (NMPA), was created in 2013 at Burdwood Bank, an undersea plateau located about 200 km south from Malvinas Islands and 150 km east from Isla de los Estados, SW Atlantic Ocean. It comprises nearly 34.000 km2 circumscribed by the 200 m isobath, between 54°-55°S and 56°-62°W, characterized by subantarctic waters of 4° to 5°C in the surface. The plateau depth varies between 50 and 200 m, where the bottom abruptly breaks into a wall reaching 1100 to more than 3000 m depth. Embedded into the Argentinean ?Pampa Azul? Marine National Science Project, the NMPA is a conservation goal that represents a challenge regarding management and planning. It comprises 3 different management areas according to the protection level required: the central one (?core?, strict protection, only control and monitoring activities), surrounded by a ?buffer? area (authorized activities, e.g. scientific research) and an external ?transition? area (productive and extractive activities contemplated in the Management Plan). Beyond the transition area, the shelf-break and nearby areas present no protection measures. The present objective is to provide the inventory of polychaetes collected during 2016 and 2017 at the core (98m depth), buffer (128m depth), transition (133m-189m depth) and slope areas (220m-798m depth), taken with a trawl net used to characterize the faunal assemblages. We identified 31 taxa, mainly epibenthic or associated with the large corals collected. Some species were conspicuous and distributed in a wide depth range (Polyeunoa laevis, Hermadion magalhaensi, Serpula narconensis, Thelepus sp. cf. T. cincinnatus). Others were only collected within the NMPA: Chaetopterus antarcticus, Nicolea chilensis, Trypanosyllis gigantea, Boccardia sp., Hermadion sp., Nephtys sp., Sabellidae (2 species). Pista mirabilis and Harmothoe sp. were recorded in the transition and slope areas, while Nicon maculata and Hyalinoecia artifex characterized the deepest slope.