Late Quaternary paleoceanographic changes in the Bering Sea and the western subarctic Pacific based on radiolarian assemblages

Abstract

Seven piston cores were obtained from the Bering Sea and the western subarctic Pacific during Cruise KH99-3 of R.V. Hakuho-maru in August 1999: Cores BOW-8A, BOW-9A, BOW-12A, AB, UMK-3A, GAT-3A in the Bering Sea, and Core ES in the western subarctic Pacific. The quantitative high-resolution analyses of radiolarians in the cores revealed significant variations in both their faunal assemblages and accumulation rates (AR). A trend of conspicuous turn-over of the surface dwellers and intermediate dwellers (increase of one at expense of the other) after the last glacial maximum (LGM) is clearly visible in the Bering Sea data set. However, this turn-over is not present at Site ES in the western subarctic Pacific core. These changes in radiolarian assemblages around the LGM suggest that the surface waters had extremely low temperature and low salinity and that the subsurface dichothermal layer (temperature minimum layer) was thickened all the way across the entire east–west span of the Bering Sea. Furthermore, sea-ice coverage extended to the central Aleutian Basin around the LGM. This suggests that the water-mass structure in the western subarctic Pacific around the LGM was basically the same as that of the eastern Bering Sea based on the species composition of the surface dwellers. However, the detailed development of intermediate water masses differed from that of the eastern Bering Sea. During Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 to 3, such species turn-over events did not occur and species abundance stayed relatively uniform in the studied cores. Therefore, the present water-mass structure is interpreted to have been formed after the LGM. Based on the relative abundances of Cycladophora davisiana (the most dominant species dwelling in the intermediate water, and a useful tracer of cold and well-oxygenated intermediate-water in the North Pacific), the past North Pacific Intermediate Water (NPIW) had the following source regions during the last 100 kyr: (1) both the Okhotsk Sea and the Bering Sea during MIS 5 to 3; (2) the Bering Sea around the LGM; and (3) shifting from the Bering Sea to the Okhotsk Sea after the LGM. Relatively low radiolarian AR at Site BOW-8A, which is the shallowest site studied here (present water depth: 884 m), were observed during the glacial periods. This is due to decrease of radiolarian production in the thinned upper water layer above the dicothermal layer caused by sea-level drop. Cycladophora davisiana probably lived deeper during the glacials than today, as it was absent in the shallow piston core. r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.