Hurricane Harvey was a category four storm that lasted from 17 August - 02 September 2017 and brought unprecedented rainfall to Texas and Louisiana, resulting in 124 trillion liters of freshwater entering the Gulf of Mexico (GoM).  With climate change predicted to increase storm severity, Hurricane Harvey may represent an increasingly common form of future storms that moves more slowly and results in higher rainfall.  Therefore, it is important to understand the impacts of Hurricane Harvey on the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico to predict how future storms will impact coastal ecosystems. To understand how the microbial ecology of the GoM was affected by Hurricane Harvey, 142 seawater samples were collected from water column profiles along the Texas coast from Galveston to Baffin Bay as well as from Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary over two cruises during September 22 - October 1st, 2017.  DNA was extracted from each sample before amplification of the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene using Polymerase Chain Reactions.  Patterns of community composition reveal stronger depth-associated differences between samples than temporal differences at the same depths.  We will present results of compositional analysis as well as comparisons to post-Harvey microbial communities analyzed previously from Galveston Bay to determine if those community members were enriched downstream on the TX shelf following the storm, correlations to seawater chemistry, and correlations to previously published phytoplankton group profiles from the same samples.

Primary Presenter: Joelle Ann Roman, Texas A&M University (joelleannr@gmail.com)

Authors:

Joelle Ann Roman, Texas A&M University  (joelleannr@gmail.com)

Shawn Doyle, The Water Institute   (sdoyle2@gmail.com)

Macy Fidler,   ()

Jessica Fitzsimmons, Texas A&M University  (jessfitz@tamu.edu)

Lisa Campbell, Texas A&M University  (lisacampbell@tamu.edu)

Steven DiMarco, Texas A&M University  (sdimarco@tamu.edu)

Jason Sylvan, Texas A&M University  (jasonsylvan@tamu.edu)