Floating Ice-Algal Aggregates below Melting Arctic Sea Ice
During two consecutive cruises to the Eastern Central Arctic in late summer 2012, we observed floating algal aggregates in the melt-water layer below and between melting ice floes of first-year pack ice. The macroscopic (1-15 cm in diameter) aggregates had a mucous consistency and were dominated by...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:3804104 2023-05-15T14:51:40+02:00 Floating Ice-Algal Aggregates below Melting Arctic Sea Ice Assmy, Philipp Ehn, Jens K. Fernández-Méndez, Mar Hop, Haakon Katlein, Christian Sundfjord, Arild Bluhm, Katrin Daase, Malin Engel, Anja Fransson, Agneta Granskog, Mats A. Hudson, Stephen R. Kristiansen, Svein Nicolaus, Marcel Peeken, Ilka Renner, Angelika H. H. Spreen, Gunnar Tatarek, Agnieszka Wiktor, Jozef 2013-10-16 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3804104 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0076599 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3804104 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0076599 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2013 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0076599 2013-11-10T01:29:07Z During two consecutive cruises to the Eastern Central Arctic in late summer 2012, we observed floating algal aggregates in the melt-water layer below and between melting ice floes of first-year pack ice. The macroscopic (1-15 cm in diameter) aggregates had a mucous consistency and were dominated by typical ice-associated pennate diatoms embedded within the mucous matrix. Aggregates maintained buoyancy and accumulated just above a strong pycnocline that separated meltwater and seawater layers. We were able, for the first time, to obtain quantitative abundance and biomass estimates of these aggregates. Although their biomass and production on a square metre basis was small compared to ice-algal blooms, the floating ice-algal aggregates supported high levels of biological activity on the scale of the individual aggregate. In addition they constituted a food source for the ice-associated fauna as revealed by pigments indicative of zooplankton grazing, high abundance of naked ciliates, and ice amphipods associated with them. During the Arctic melt season, these floating aggregates likely play an important ecological role in an otherwise impoverished near-surface sea ice environment. Our findings provide important observations and measurements of a unique aggregate-based habitat during the 2012 record sea ice minimum year. Text Arctic Sea ice Zooplankton PubMed Central (PMC) Arctic PLoS ONE 8 10 e76599 |
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language |
English |
topic |
Research Article |
spellingShingle |
Research Article Assmy, Philipp Ehn, Jens K. Fernández-Méndez, Mar Hop, Haakon Katlein, Christian Sundfjord, Arild Bluhm, Katrin Daase, Malin Engel, Anja Fransson, Agneta Granskog, Mats A. Hudson, Stephen R. Kristiansen, Svein Nicolaus, Marcel Peeken, Ilka Renner, Angelika H. H. Spreen, Gunnar Tatarek, Agnieszka Wiktor, Jozef Floating Ice-Algal Aggregates below Melting Arctic Sea Ice |
topic_facet |
Research Article |
description |
During two consecutive cruises to the Eastern Central Arctic in late summer 2012, we observed floating algal aggregates in the melt-water layer below and between melting ice floes of first-year pack ice. The macroscopic (1-15 cm in diameter) aggregates had a mucous consistency and were dominated by typical ice-associated pennate diatoms embedded within the mucous matrix. Aggregates maintained buoyancy and accumulated just above a strong pycnocline that separated meltwater and seawater layers. We were able, for the first time, to obtain quantitative abundance and biomass estimates of these aggregates. Although their biomass and production on a square metre basis was small compared to ice-algal blooms, the floating ice-algal aggregates supported high levels of biological activity on the scale of the individual aggregate. In addition they constituted a food source for the ice-associated fauna as revealed by pigments indicative of zooplankton grazing, high abundance of naked ciliates, and ice amphipods associated with them. During the Arctic melt season, these floating aggregates likely play an important ecological role in an otherwise impoverished near-surface sea ice environment. Our findings provide important observations and measurements of a unique aggregate-based habitat during the 2012 record sea ice minimum year. |
format |
Text |
author |
Assmy, Philipp Ehn, Jens K. Fernández-Méndez, Mar Hop, Haakon Katlein, Christian Sundfjord, Arild Bluhm, Katrin Daase, Malin Engel, Anja Fransson, Agneta Granskog, Mats A. Hudson, Stephen R. Kristiansen, Svein Nicolaus, Marcel Peeken, Ilka Renner, Angelika H. H. Spreen, Gunnar Tatarek, Agnieszka Wiktor, Jozef |
author_facet |
Assmy, Philipp Ehn, Jens K. Fernández-Méndez, Mar Hop, Haakon Katlein, Christian Sundfjord, Arild Bluhm, Katrin Daase, Malin Engel, Anja Fransson, Agneta Granskog, Mats A. Hudson, Stephen R. Kristiansen, Svein Nicolaus, Marcel Peeken, Ilka Renner, Angelika H. H. Spreen, Gunnar Tatarek, Agnieszka Wiktor, Jozef |
author_sort |
Assmy, Philipp |
title |
Floating Ice-Algal Aggregates below Melting Arctic Sea Ice |
title_short |
Floating Ice-Algal Aggregates below Melting Arctic Sea Ice |
title_full |
Floating Ice-Algal Aggregates below Melting Arctic Sea Ice |
title_fullStr |
Floating Ice-Algal Aggregates below Melting Arctic Sea Ice |
title_full_unstemmed |
Floating Ice-Algal Aggregates below Melting Arctic Sea Ice |
title_sort |
floating ice-algal aggregates below melting arctic sea ice |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2013 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3804104 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0076599 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Sea ice Zooplankton |
genre_facet |
Arctic Sea ice Zooplankton |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3804104 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0076599 |
op_rights |
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0076599 |
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PLoS ONE |
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8 |
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10 |
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e76599 |
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