Macrobenthic species of the Eastern South Pacific (OBIS, ESPOBIS)

In the Humboldt Current System, a rich fauna of soft-bottom communities inhabits the continental margin in contact with low-oxygen equatorial subsurface waters, and low-salinity, well-oxygenated intermediate Antarctic waters. The collection of specimens comes from the MinOx cruise (Oxygen Minimum Zone cruise) at northern Chile in March 2000 and the Chilean-German expedition SONNE carried out in 2001 along the Chilean coast. These studies allowed an extensive examination of these communities and their habitats. The identified species were from specimens collected across the continental margin of Chile (20º-42ºS). Bathymetrically, the samples were collected from different sampling sites over the shelf and continental slope, covering a depth range from 20 to 2000 m, from sediments inside the Oxygen Minima Zone (OMZ: <0.5 ml/l-1) and beneath the OMZ. The polychaetes were the numerically dominant group on all areas and depths, followed by peracarid crustaceans and small molluscs. This collection includes some new species and many new records in the bathyal zone.