About the Authors

Bhavani E. Narayanaswamy

Bhavani.Narayanaswamy@sams.ac.uk

Affiliation Scottish Association for Marine Science, Scottish Marine Institute, Oban, Argyll, United Kingdom

Brian J. Bett

Affiliation Ocean Biogeochemistry and Ecosystems, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, United Kingdom

Competing Interests

The Atlantic Frontier Environmental Network (AFEN) and the Natural Environmental Research Council (Grant No: NER/D/S/2001/00659) funded this study. AFEN comprised: AGIP (UK) Ltd., Amerada Hess Ltd., BG E&P Ltd., BP Amoco, Chevron UK Ltd., Conoco (UK) Ltd., Enterprise Oil plc., Marathon Oil UK Ltd., Phillips Petroleum Company UK Ltd., Shell UK Exploration and Production Ltd., Statoil Ltd., Texaco North Sea UK Company, TotalFina, Veba Oil and Gas UK Ltd., Department of Trade and Industry, Joint Nature Conservation Committee and the Scottish Executive's Environment and Rural Affairs Department. The information collected is all publicly available. The authors declare that there are no competing interests and they adhere to all PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: BJB. Analyzed the data: BEN BJB. Wrote the paper: BEN BJB. Undertook lab work: BEN. Conceived and designed the experiments: BJB. Analyzed the data: BEN BJB. Wrote the paper: BEN BJB. Undertook lab work: BEN.