Although in the early days it was believed that there could be no life at the bottom of the sea, a steady production of energy deep down at the ocean floor has led to a thriving benthic community which may however be affected by environmental and anthropogenic changes.
Investigation of benthic communities is done by deep sea diving and actually obtaining samples of such organisms from the ocean floor. Traps, dredging and investigation of seafloor sediments could be useful in establishing the biological nature of such communities. The benthic organisms are essential for the environment as they clean up the water and are responsible for re-mineralization of organic matter. Since benthic sea creatures are a diverse group with many functions, they also tend to form a major link in the biological chain.
This project deals with the study of human disturbance on the benthic community and the changes in the structural and functional manifestations of these organisms when anthropogenic interventions are obvious in any ocean floor inhabited by these organisms. Dudgeon (2006) studied benthic invertebrates and their drift in eight streams within Northern Indonesia where rainforest streams and oceans are disturbed by anthropogenic activities. The benthic community studied were that found in Papua New Guinea and South East Asia and in general not predatory. The results indicated that the benthic communities were strongly affected by channelisation and conversion of forests to agriculture. Some benthic species were found to show drifting activities at night showing some sort of community reactions to changes in the external environment.
Arasaki et al (2004) suggests that anthropogenic disturbance is one of the major problems in marine communities and any such disturbance could be quantified by using multivariate techniques for analysing the distribution of such communities. The results of the study showed that ecological trends are determined by faunal abundance and all central continental regions with widespread distribution of benthic communities seem to be affected by human activities.
There are many studies that show the effects of fishing or dredging on the benthic commu