Wind-driven upwelling of iron sustains dense blooms and food webs in the eastern Weddell Gyre.

The Southern Ocean is a major sink of anthropogenic CO and an important foraging area for top trophic level consumers. However, iron limitation sets an upper limit to primary productivity. Here we report on a considerably dense late summer phytoplankton bloom spanning 9000 km in the open ocean of the eastern Weddell Gyre.

Distribution pattern of mercury in northern Barents Sea and Eurasian Basin surface sediment.

Marine sediment is a significant sink for the global pollutant mercury. In a rapidly changing Arctic region, mercury (Hg) bioaccumulation in the marine ecosystem remains a prominent environmental issue. Here, we report surface sediment (0-2 cm) concentrations of Hg and other toxic elements of interest (Cr, Ni, Zn, Cu, As, Cd, Pb) in the northern Barents Sea and Eurasian Basin.

Temporal dynamics of carbon sequestration in coastal North Atlantic fjord system as seen through dissolved organic matter characterisation.

Fjord systems in higher latitudes are unique coastal water ecosystems that facilitate the study of dissolved organic matter (DOM) dynamics from surface to deeper waters. The current work was undertaken in the Trondheim fjord characterized by North Atlantic waters, and compared DOM fractions from three depths - surface (3 m), intermediate (225 m) and deep (440 m) in four seasons, from late spring to winter in 2017. The high-resolution mass spectrometry data showed that DOM composition varies significantly in different seasons rather than in different depths in the fjord systems.

From the Ocean to the Lab-Assessing Iron Limitation in Cyanobacteria: An Interface Paper.

Iron is an essential, yet scarce, nutrient in marine environments. Phytoplankton, and especially cyanobacteria, have developed a wide range of mechanisms to acquire iron and maintain their iron-rich photosynthetic machinery. Iron limitation studies often utilize either oceanographic methods to understand large scale processes, or laboratory-based, molecular experiments to identify underlying molecular mechanisms on a cellular level.

Climate change mitigation effects: How do potential CO leaks from a sub-seabed storage site in the Norwegian Sea affect Astarte sp. bivalves?

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of the most promising mitigation strategies for reducing the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO) to the atmosphere and may substantially help to decelerate global warming. There is an increasing demand for CCS sites. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge of the environmental risk associated with potential leakage of CO from the storage sites; and even more, what happens when the seepage stops.