The QICS project (Quantifying and Monitoring Potential Ecosystem Impacts of Geological Carbons Storage) was established to improve our understanding of the potential impacts of CO2 release on the environment and to develop tools and best practice for monitoring sub-seabed CCS reservoirs. To monitor the potential impact of a CO2 leak to surficial benthic megafauna, cages of bivalves (the common mussel Mytilus edulis Linnaeus, 1758 and the king scallop Pecten maximus (Linnaeus, 1758)) were deployed at the gas release site and at a reference site in the QICS experiment - both within Ardmucknish Bay, Oban, Scotland. Replicate individuals were sampled at six time points over a 125-day period, which spanned both the 37-day injection and recovery phases of the experiment, in order to establish impacts to molecular physiology. Samples of bivalves were also simultaneously sampled from a reference site within the bay in order to contrast changes in physiology induced by the gas release with naturally variability in the physiological performance of both species. There was no evidence of gene regulation of either selected carbonic anhydrases (CAx genes) or the alpha subunit of sodium potassium ATPAses (ATP1A genes) in individual bivalves collected from the CO2 gas release site, in either species. In the common mussel Mytilus edulis there was only evidence for changes with time in the expression of genes coding for different classes of carbonic anhydrase. It was concluded that the effects of the plume of elevated pCO2 on ion-regulatory gene transcription were negligible in both species. Pratt et al. 2015. No evidence for impacts to the molecular ecophysiology of ion or CO2 regulation in tissues of selected surface-dwelling bivalves in the vicinity of a sub-seabed CO2 release. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control. DOI:10.1016/j.ijggc.2014.10.001. QICS project website: www.bgs.ac.uk/qics/home.html.
