Evidence for the grazing hypothesis: Grazing reduces phytoplankton responses of the HNLC ecosystem to iron enrichment in the western subarctic pacific (SEEDS II)

Abstract

A mesoscale iron-enrichment study (SEEDS II) was carried out in the western subarctic Pacific in the summer of 2004. The iron patch was traced for 26 days, which included observations of the development and the decline of the bloom by mapping with sulfur hexafluoride. The experiment was conducted at almost the same location and the same season as SEEDS (previous iron-enrichment experiment). However, the results were very different between SEEDS and SEEDS II. A high accumulation of phytoplankton biomass (∼18 mg chl m−3) was characteristic of SEEDS. In contrast, in SEEDS II, the surface chlorophyll-a accumulation was lower, 0.8 to 2.48 mg m−3, with no prominent diatom bloom. Photosynthetic competence in terms of Fv/Fm for the total phytoplankton community in the surface waters increased after the iron enrichments and returned to the ambient level by day 20. These results suggest that the photosynthetic physiology of the phytoplankton assemblage was improved by the iron enrichments and returned to an iron-stressed condition during the declining phase of the bloom. Pico-phytoplankton (<2 µm) became dominant in the chlorophyll-a size distribution after the bloom. We observed a nitrate drawdown of 3.8 µM in the patch (day 21), but there was no difference in silicic acid concentration between inside and outside the patch. Mesozooplankton (copepod) biomass was three to five times higher during the bloom-development phase in SEEDS II than in SEEDS. The copepod biomass increased exponentially. The grazing rate estimation indicates that the copepod grazing prevented the formation of an extensive diatom bloom, which was observed in SEEDS, and led to the change to a pico-phytoplankton dominated community towards the end of the experiment.