Vertical fluxes of organic matter over an annual cycle at an Arctic deep-sea sponge ground

DOI

Deep-sea sponge grounds are hotspots of benthic biomass and diversity. To date, very limited data exists on the range of environmental conditions in areas containing deep-sea sponge grounds and which factors are driving their distribution and sustenance. We investigated oceanographic conditions at a deep-sea sponge ground located on an Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge seamount. Hydrodynamic measurements were performed along CTD transects and a lander was deployed within the sponge ground that recorded near-bottom physical properties as well as vertical fluxes of organic matter over an annual cycle. The data demonstrate that the sponge ground is found at water temperatures of -0.5 to 1 °C and is situated at the interface between two water masses at only 0.7° equatorward of the turning point latitude of semidiurnal lunar internal tides. Internal waves supported by vertical density stratification interact with the seamount topography and produce turbulent mixing as well as resuspension of organic matter with temporarily very high current speeds up to 0.72 m s-1. The vertical movement of the water column delivers food and nutrients from water layers above and below towards the sponge ground. Highest organic carbon flux was observed during the summer phytoplankton bloom period, providing fresh organic matter from the surface. The flux of fresh organic matter is unlikely to sustain the carbon demand of this ecosystem. Therefore, the availability of bacteria, nutrients and dissolved and particulate matter, delivered by tidally-forced internal wave turbulence and transport by horizontal mean flows, likely plays an important role in meeting ecosystem-level food requirements.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.927955
Related Identifier IsSupplementTo https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JC016776
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.927955
Provenance
Creator Hanz, Ulrike ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2021
Funding Reference Horizon 2020 https://doi.org/10.13039/501100007601 Crossref Funder ID 679849 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/679849 Deep-sea Sponge Grounds Ecosystems of the North Atlantic
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 204 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (7.523 LON, 73.816 LAT); Schultz Bank
Temporal Coverage Begin 2016-07-10T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2017-06-05T00:00:00Z