Strong Margin Influence on the Arctic Ocean Barium Cycle Revealed by Pan-Arctic Synthesis.

Early studies revealed relationships between barium (Ba), particulate organic carbon and silicate, suggesting applications for Ba as a paleoproductivity tracer and as a tracer of modern ocean circulation. But, what controls the distribution of barium (Ba) in the oceans? Here, we investigated the Arctic Ocean Ba cycle through a one-of-a-kind data set containing dissolved (dBa), particulate (pBa), and stable isotope Ba ratio (δ138Ba) data from four Arctic GEOTRACES expeditions conducted in 2015. We hypothesized that margins would be a substantial source of Ba to the Arctic Ocean water column. The dBa, pBa, and δ138Ba distributions all suggest significant modification of inflowing Pacific seawater over the shelves, and the dBa mass balance implies that ∼50% of the dBa inventory (upper 500 m of the Arctic water column) was supplied by nonconservative inputs. Calculated areal dBa fluxes are up to 10 µmol m-2 day-1 on the margin, which is comparable to fluxes described in other regions. Applying this approach to dBa data from the 1994 Arctic Ocean Survey yields similar results. The Canadian Arctic Archipelago did not appear to have a similar margin source; rather, the dBa distribution in this section is consistent with mixing of Arctic Ocean-derived waters and Baffin Bay-derived waters. Although we lack enough information to identify the specifics of the shelf sediment Ba source, we suspect that a sedimentary remineralization and terrigenous sources (e.g., submarine groundwater discharge or fluvial particles) are contributors.

Nitrogen Utilization and Toxin Production by Two Diatoms of the Pseudo-nitzschia pseudodelicatissima Complex: P. cuspidata and P. fryxelliana.

The toxigenic diatom Pseudo-nitzschia cuspidata, isolated from the U.S. Pacific Northwest, was examined in unialgal batch cultures to evaluate domoic acid (DA) toxicity and growth as a function of light, N substrate, and growth phase. Experiments conducted at saturating (120 µmol photons · m(-2)  · s(-1) ) and subsaturating (40 µmol photons · m(-2)  · s(-1) ) photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD), demonstrate that P. cuspidata grows significantly faster at the higher PPFD on all three N substrates tested [nitrate (NO3 (-) ), ammonium (NH4 (+) ), and urea], but neither cellular toxicity nor exponential growth rates were strongly associated with one N source over the other at high PPFD. However, at the lower PPFD, the exponential growth rates were approximately halved, and the cells were significantly more toxic regardless of N substrate. Urea supported significantly faster growth rates, and cellular toxicity varied as a function of N substrate with NO3 (-) -supported cells being significantly more toxic than both NH4 (+) - and urea-supported cells at the low PPFD. Kinetic uptake parameters were determined for another member of the P. pseudodelicatissima complex, P. fryxelliana. After growth of these cells on NO3 (-) they exhibited maximum specific uptake rates (Vmax ) of 22.7, 29.9, 8.98 × 10(-3)  · h(-1) , half-saturation constants (Ks ) of 1.34, 2.14, 0.28 µg-at N · L(-1) , and affinity values (α) of 17.0, 14.7, 32.5 × 10(-3)  · h(-1) /(µg-at N · L(-1) ) for NO3 (-) , NH4 (+) and urea, respectively. These labo-ratory results demonstrate the capability of P. cuspidata to grow and produce DA on both oxidized and reduced N substrates during both exponential and stationary growth phases, and the uptake kinetic results for the pseudo-cryptic species, P. fryxelliana suggest that reduced N sources from coastal runoff could be important for maintenance of these small pennate diatoms in U.S. west coast blooms, especially during times of low ambient N concentrations.