Evidence of Rapid Functional Benthic Recovery Following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident was a massive deep-sea oil spill and resulted in deposition of hydrocarbons at the seafloor surface. Soft sediment benthic macrofauna provide critical global ecosystem services, and little is known about their recovery trajectories from similar disturbances in the deep sea. Recent publications report an initial opportunistic benthic infaunal response and predict 50–100 years for recovery of species-level diversity, abundance, and composition.