Cold-water corals and mud volcanoes in the West Alboran Basin

摘要: Mud diapirs and mud volcanoes were cored in the West Alboran Seas during the SAGAS 08 (TTR-17 Leg 1, 2008) cruise (for the location see G. Gennari et al., this volume). The Dhaka mud volcano (MV) has been investigated in detail to characterize the mud breccia. The sedimentary succession is composed by a layer of possibly pelagic sediments at the base (150 cm), covered by a mud-breccia layer, a coral fragments-rich unit and a hemi-pelagic cap. Therefore, a micropaleontological study on benthic and planktonic foraminifera was carried out to investigate in particular the pelagic sediments covering and underlying the mud breccia layer.