Plankton community and bacterial metabolism in Arctic sea ice leads during summer 2010

• Published in: Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers
• Main Authors: García-Martín, E. E., Serret, P., Leakey, R. J. G.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Fram Strait; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/50206/; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr.2014.06.007

Microbial plankton metabolism was examined during summer 2010 in sea ice-influenced waters of the Fram Strait, eastern Arctic Ocean. Rates of gross primary production and community respiration were tightly coupled over a wide range of values (33±3–143±6 and 20±3–126±6 mmol O2 m−2 −1, respectively) leading to a prevalence of positive net community production. The high variability in community respiration, similar to that of gross primary production, suggests that heterotrophic metabolism may exhibit a significant response to environmental change. Bacterial respiration was assessed at similar time scales to bacterial production measurements, by determining the in vivo INT reduction capacity without pre-filtering the community. Bacteria seem to play a major role in total community respiration, contributing between 5% and 61% of total community respiration, indicating that a high fraction of the organic carbon in Arctic planktonic food webs could flow through these microbes.