Research Interests Markus Eisele

Cold-water corals are distributed all over the world’s oceans where they form a high variety of ecosystems depending on their specific environment. Some of the most prominent cold-water coral ecosystems are the so-called cold-water coral mounds, large build-ups reaching a lateral extension of up to 5 km and heights of up to 380 m. These cold-water coral mounds are mainly composed of fragments of cold-water corals - with Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata being the most common species – and hemipelagic mud. Mound growth thereby is promoted by prospering cold-water coral thickets. This means in turn, that changes of the environment have a direct effect on mound growth.

Belgica Mound Province – Porcupine Seabight, Irish continental margin
The Belgica Mound Province on the Irish continental margin encloses a cluster of mounds that are arranged in three chains in different water depths along the slope.
However, only the deepest mound chain is host to prolific coral thickets while the mounds located upslope are covered only by fossil coral rubble. In the course of the DFG project CORICON shall now be investigated, if coral growth during different environmental – especially oceanographic - settings took place on mound chains in different water depths.

Banda Mound Province, Mauritanian continental slope
The Banda Mound Province is a chain of coral mounds off Mauritania, that extends alongslope in water depths between 450 and 550 m. So far, no living coral colonies have been discovered on those mounds. Nonetheless, first results show, that corals must have found those mounds favourable in the past, especially during cooler stages, as seen in high vertical mound growth rates. Unravelling the factors that control coral growth here is subject of current research.

„The long-term development of cold water coral mounds in the NE-Atlantic”
My PhD thesis deals with the environmental factors, that are steering mound growth in different latitudes and during different climatic stages. For this purpose, two cold-water coral mounds along the East Atlantic margin were selected: Galway Mound in the Belgica Mound Province in the Porcupine Seabight on the Irish continental margin at ~51°N latitude and an unnamed coral mound of the Banda Mound Province on the Mauritanian margin at ~17°N.
To the thesis

“Acoustic mapping and sedimentology of mixed carbonate-siliciclastic non-tropical carbonate milieus near Punta Chivato in the southern Gulf of California”
Punta Chivato is a small headland in the middle of the east coast of the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico, that extends several kilometres east into the Gulf of California. On the Punta Chivato shelf one of the largest rhodolith beds within the Gulf of California is situated. The objective of the research on the shelf of Punta Chivato was, besides the sedimentological investigation of carbonates at the transition from warm-temperate to subtropical carbonate environments, to test the applicability of an acoustic ground discrimination system (QTC 5) for the mapping of rhodolith beds.