Abstract
Marine snow (MS) forms naturally in the ocean and consists of living and non-living particles, involving mucus-producing phytoplankton and bacteria, detritus, faeces from zooplankton and fish and inorganic particles. In the context of oil spills, MS received attention as a possible source of oil sedimentation on the seabed during the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill. Dispersant (Corexit 9500) was applied at the surface and was injected subsurface at the wellhead, as the main oil spill response method. The subsurface treatment resulted in a deep sea plume of dispersed oil. This plume was suggested to be a source of oil sedimentation driven by biodegradation of soluble oil compounds (Valentine et al., 2014), resulting in aggregates (flocs) of bacteria, oil, degradation products and exopolysaccharides (Hazen et al., 2010). This project aims to understand the formation of oil-related aggregates (ORA) and oil-related marine snow (ORMS) in seawater and their influence on the biodegradation of chemically dispersed oil in different marine environments.