| Harbor terminals and urban sewage effluents affect the composition and distribution of epibenthic organisms. In this study, we hypothesized that the benthic community structure at the Vitoria Harbor changes spatially in a ~3 km scale, and that these changes are associated with environmental gradients resulting from point-source sewage and differences in the physical and chemical parameters of the water along the harbor access channel. Four sites, internal (PI), intermediate-internal (PMI), intermediate-external (PME) and external (PE), varying from 0.5 to 4.0 km off the harbor, were sampled on five quadrats at six sampling dates (N = 30 per site). The epibenthic community on the shallow sublitoral rocky shore was sampled fortnightly from December 2005 to... |
