ABSTRACT
Accidental oil spills resulting from the extraction and transportation of petroleum products unfortunately are common events, and can have strong and long-lasting effects on coastal marine ecosystems (Carls et al. 2000; Neuparth et al. 2012). These include direct mortality of ecosystem component species (McGurk and Brown 1996) as well as indirect effects such as habitat loss (Roth and Baltz 2009; McCall and Pennings 2012), interference with reproduction (Kocan et al. 1996; Brown-Peterson et al., Chapter 12, this volume), and reduced individual and population growth (Carls et al. 2002; Pearson et al. 2012). The evaluation of ecosystem response and recovery from an oil spill is complex because spill impacts are only one of a myriad of stressors affecting an ecosystem, and because the vulnerability of individual ecosystem components to oil will vary based on biology, diet, mobility, habitat, and timing (Harwell et al. 2010). Understanding ecosystem-level effects therefore requires an understanding of population-level effects for important ecosystem species and this requires a comprehensive approach involving field and laboratory
CONTENTS
Introduction .................................................................................................................................253 Methods ........................................................................................................................................256
