If you would like to have your recent publications featured on the OCB website and eNewsletter please contact ocb_news@whoi.edu. View our guidelines for writing a OCB Science Highlight.
As a part of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), organic acid charge groups can contribute significantly to total alkalinity (TA) in natural waters. Such a contribution is termed as organic alkalinity (OrgAlk). Beyond being part of TA, OrgAlk represents an important biogeochemical linkage between organic and inorganic carbon cycling. In other words, the biogeochemical cycling of […]
Read MoreIn the Southern Ocean, coccolithophores are thought to account for a major fraction of marine carbonate production and export to the deep sea. Despite their importance in the ocean carbon cycle, we lack fundamental information about Southern Ocean coccolithophore abundance, species composition, and contribution to carbonate export. A recent study in Biogeosciences has generated annual […]
Read MoreBarely visible to the naked eye, gelatinous zooplankton play important roles in marine food webs. Cnidaria, Ctenophora, and Urochordata are omnipresent and provide important food sources for many more highly developed marine organisms. These small, nearly transparent organisms also transport large quantities of “jelly-carbon” from the upper ocean to depth. A recent study in Global […]
Read MoreThe pelagic brown alga Sargassum forms a habitat that hosts a rich diversity of life, including other algae, crustaceans, fish, turtles, and birds in both the Gulf of Mexico and the area of the Atlantic Ocean known as the Sargasso Sea. However, high abundances of Sargassum have been appearing in the tropical Atlantic, in some […]
Read MoreIron (Fe) is a key element to sustaining life, but it is present at extremely low concentrations in seawater. This scarcity limits phytoplankton growth in large swaths of the global ocean, with implications for marine food webs and carbon cycling. The acquisition of Fe by phytoplankton is an important process that mediates the movement of […]
Read MoreMarine microbes are the engines of global biogeochemical cycling in the oceans. They are responsible for approximately half of all photosynthesis on the planet and drive the ‘biological pump’, which transfers organic carbon from the surface to the deep ocean. As such, it is important to determine how marine microbes will adapt and evolve in […]
Read MoreTropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons) are the most extreme episodic weather event affecting subtropical and temperate oceans. Hurricanes generate intense surface cooling and vertical mixing in the upper ocean, resulting in nutrient upwelling into the photic zone and episodic phytoplankton blooms. However, their influence on the deep ocean is unknown. In October 2016, Category 3 […]
Read MoreWith their high primary productivity and slow decomposition in anoxic soils, salt marshes and other coastal wetlands can store carbon more efficiently than terrestrial uplands. These wetlands also provide critical ecosystem services such as interception of land-derived nutrients before they can enter the coastal ocean. Therefore, it is important to understand how anthropogenic supplies of […]
Read MoreScientists have long known the role of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) in Southern Ocean ecosystems. Evidence is gathering about krill’s biogeochemical importance through releasing millions of faecal pellets in swarms and stimulating primary production through nutrient excretion. Here, we explore and synthesise the known impacts that this highly abundant and rather large species has on […]
Read MoreSince diatoms carry out much of the primary production in iron-limited marine environments, constraining the details of how these phytoplankton acquire the iron they need is paramount to our understanding of biogeochemical cycles of iron-depleted high-nutrient low-chlorophyll (HNLC) regions. The proteins involved in this process are largely unknown, but McQuaid et al. (2018) scientists described […]
Read More