Response of a coastal microbial community to diluted bitumen and the effect of inorganic nutrients

Construction of pipelines to transport and export diluted bitumen has raised awareness of the need to understand the effects of a diluted bitumen spill in coastal waters. Most studies measuring potential biodegradation rates add inorganic nutrients to incubations to prevent nutrient limitation due to the high amounts of carbon in oil. This study carried out a short, five-day incubation to determine if inorganic nutrients impacted the response of coastal microbes under cold water conditions.