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Bacterioplankton Distribution And Production In The Bathypelagic Ocean: Directly Coupled To Particulate Organic Carbon Export?, Da Hansell, Hw Ducklow

VIMS Articles

A recently published evaluation of bacterioplankton abundance and productivity in the bathypelagic North Pacific suggests that these properties are generally coupled with particulate organic carbon (POC) fluxes. In that analysis, bacterial biomass and productivity were several-fold greater in subarctic than subtropical waters, consistent with the basin-scale distribution of POC flux and suggestive of a sinking POC --> DOC --> bacteria transformation of the carbon. To test this hypothesis, we sought to determine whether the very strong spatial and temporal gradients in POC flux in the Arabian Sea would force similar deep-ocean gradients in bacterial variables. On both a within and …