ICE ALGAL INVESTIGATIONS : HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE (17th Symposium on Polar Biology)

• Main Author: Rita A. HORNER
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Proceeding 1996
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Weddell Sea; Weddell; North Pole; Polar Biology; Proceedings of the NIPR Symposium on Polar Biology; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_uri&item_id=5299; http://id.nii.ac.jp/1291/00005299/; https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=5299&item_no=1&attribute_id=18&file_no=1

Organisms that live in sea ice have been known and studied for over 150 years. The earliest studies were done on samples collected during voyages of exploration and are mainly lists of species. Experimental investigations began in the 1960s and, in the first 20 years, consisted primarily of pioneering studies on primary productivity, biomass, spatial and temporal distributions, and composition and abundance of the biota. By the 1980s, there were better techniques for measuring primary productivity and biomass and more emphasis was placed on physiological studies. Much of this work was done from shore-based stations. However, in the late 1970s, ice-breaking or ice-strengthened research vessels became available and since then, large, multi-disciplinary investigations, involving biologists, ice physicists, and chemists, have worked mostly in the marginal seas of polar regions, although Canadian and U.S. icebreakers crossed the Arctic Ocean via the North Pole in the summer of 1994. Drifting ice floe and ice island stations have provided information from the central Arctic Ocean since the 1930s, and in 1992 from the Weddell Sea.