Standing crops of planktonic ciliates and copepod nauplii in the Subarctic North Pacific and the Bering Sea in summer

Abstract

Abundances and biomasses of planktonic ciliates and copepod nauplii, major components of the microzooplankton community, were investigated in the subarctic North Pacific and the Bering Sea in summer of 1997. Their regional variation was illustrated by demarcating the entire area into five regions. Ciliates always predominated both in abundance (>94%) and biomass (>78%) over nauplii. Regional means of ciliates in the water column were higher in the Alaskan Gyre (120 × 106 cells/m2) and the Western Subarctic Gyre (110 × 106 cells/m2) in terms of abundance, and rich in the Bering Sea Gyre (360 mgC/m2) and the Western Subarctic Gyre (340 mgC/m2) in terms of biomass. By contrast, standing crops of ciliates were poor in the Oyashio Region (67 × 106 cells/m2; 170 mgC/m2) and the Transition Region (64 × 106 cells/m2; 160 mgC/m2). The values of biomass reported here are generally in agreement with the values reported previously from the Bering Sea Gyre and the Alaskan Gyre but are considerably higher than the previous value found in the Western Subarctic Gyre. No significant correlations could be found between chlorophyll a crop and standing crops of ciliates and copepod nauplii over the entire subarctic North Pacific and the Bering Sea during this summer.