Muddy sea floor makes up the largest habitat on Earth. Mud is a relatively fine sediment (grainsize of <63 μm) and tends to accumulate in areas of low hydrodynamic flow and become dominated by tube dwellers and burrowing species with other species living on or just above the surface of the mud. Many of these feed on organic material and microscopic organisms living within the sediment. Depending on sediment grain size, mud can become anoxic below the top 1-2 cm. Mud is associated with several key biogenic species such as mangroves and seagrass in the intertidal, and subtidal algal meadows, tubeworms, sea pens and Xenophyophores. The percent mud layers for the region were developed from >30,000 raw sediment sample data and compiled (Jenkins et al. 1997), then imported into ArcGIS and interpolated using Inverse Distance Weighting (Bostock et al., 2019).

Bostock, H., C. Jenkins, K. Mackay, L. Carter, S. Nodder, A. Orpin, A. Pallentin, and R. Wysoczanski. 2019. Distribution of surficial sediments in the ocean around New Zealand/Aotearoa. Part A: continental slope and deep ocean. New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics 62:1-23.

Bostock, H., C. Jenkins, K. Mackay, L. Carter, S. Nodder, A. Orpin, A. Pallentin, and R. Wysoczanski. 2019. Distribution of surficial sediments in the ocean around New Zealand/Aotearoa. Part B: continental shelf. New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics 62:24-45. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00288306.2018.1523199

Jenkins CJ. 1997. Building offshore soils databases. Sea Technology. 38(12):25–28.

Muddy sea floor makes up the largest habitat on Earth. Mud is a relatively fine sediment (grainsize of <63 μm) and tends to accumulate in areas of low hydrodynamic flow and become dominated by tube dwellers and burrowing species with other species living on or just above the surface of the mud. Many of these feed on organic material and microscopic organisms living within the sediment. Depending on sediment grain size, mud can become anoxic below the top 1-2 cm. Mud is associated with several key biogenic species such as mangroves and seagrass in the intertidal, and subtidal algal meadows, tubeworms, sea pens and Xenophyophores. The percent mud layers for the region were developed from >30,000 raw sediment sample data and compiled (Jenkins et al. 1997), then imported into ArcGIS and interpolated using Inverse Distance Weighting (Bostock et al., 2019).

Bostock, H., C. Jenkins, K. Mackay, L. Carter, S. Nodder, A. Orpin, A. Pallentin, and R. Wysoczanski. 2019. Distribution of surficial sediments in the ocean around New Zealand/Aotearoa. Part A: continental slope and deep ocean. New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics 62:1-23.

Bostock, H., C. Jenkins, K. Mackay, L. Carter, S. Nodder, A. Orpin, A. Pallentin, and R. Wysoczanski. 2019. Distribution of surficial sediments in the ocean around New Zealand/Aotearoa. Part B: continental shelf. New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics 62:24-45. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00288306.2018.1523199

Jenkins CJ. 1997. Building offshore soils databases. Sea Technology. 38(12):25–28.