Abundance, population structure and vertical distribution of dominant calanoid copepods on the eastern Weddell Sea shelf during a spring phytoplankton bloom

18 pages, 13 figures, 1 table.

The main emphasis of this study was to analyse the short-term development of abundance, population structure and vertical distribution of the dominant calanoid copepods during a phytoplankton bloom in the coastal area of the eastern Weddell Sea in December 2003. Microcalanus pygmaeus was by far the most abundant calanoid species. Metridia gerlachei, Ctenocalanus citer, Calanoides acutus, Calanus propinquus and the ice-associated Stephos longipes were also present in considerable proportions. The observed changes in the population characteristics and parameters of these species are described in detail and discussed in the context of the spring phytoplankton bloom. A conspicuous event occurring during the final stage of the study was the development of a strong storm. While the results suggest that this storm did not have any considerable influence on the populations of all other investigated copepod species, it very likely caused pronounced changes in the S. longipes population present in the water column. Before the storm, S. longipes was found primarily in the upper 100 m of the water column, and its population was dominated by adults (mean proportion = 41%) and the copepodite stage I (mean proportion = 30%). After the storm, the abundance increased considerably, and the copepodite stage I contributed by far the largest proportion (53%) of the total population indicating that the early copepodite stages probably had been released from the sea ice into the under ice water layer due to ice break-up and ice melt processes caused by the storm.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the help of the captain, the oYcers and the crew of RV “Polarstern” and the colleagues participating in the expedition ANT XXI/2. Tatjana Ratkova determined and counted the phytoplankton. Thomas Brey helped with the correlation model. Boris Cisewski calculated the mixed layer depth and created the raw version of Fig. 3. Anna Kop and Ruth Alheit made the linguistic revision of the manuscript. Anna Pasternak was partly supported by a stipend from the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, RFBR project 07-04-00029, and the Alfred-Wegener-Institut.

Peer reviewed