News from RV Niel Armstrong: Zooplankton sampling in the Arctic Ocean

Our colleagues Prof. Marja Koski and Dr Delove Asiedu from the Technical University of Denmark, National Institute for Aquatic Resources, are currently on board RV Neil Armstrong from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) in the Davis Strait. They are sampling zooplankton and conducting experiments to determine the contribution of Arctic zooplankton to carbon export amidst climate change. This study is part of the Pelagic Ocean Living Lab 2: Zooplankton and Carbon and will also contribute to the Marine Organic Carbon Atlas Living Lab.

Among other things, our colleagues have been sampling zooplankton and their carcasses from different water depths using a Multinet to determine the community composition and the importance of carcasses for the vertical flux. They have also collected live zooplankton to measure their production of faecal pellets – another important aspect of carbon export.

The cruise is part of an interdisciplinary effort to investigate the Davis Strait, which is an essential gateway for exchanges of freshwater and heat and for biological production, with impacts on deepwater formation and biogeochemistry. Davis Strait is part of the Pan-Arctic Distributed Biological Observatory (DBO) and, thus, an optimal site to investigate pelagic EOVs. The cruise is led by Dr. Craig Lee from the University of Washington who has been investigating the water exchange in Davis Strait with moorings for over two decades.

Marja Koski is a Professor at DTU Aqua researching biodiversity and plankton in the Arctic and the effects of climate change and other human pressures whereas Delove Asiedu is a Postdoctoral researcher at DTU Aqua on the Bioecoocean project, where he is focused on the contribution of plankton to the biological carbon pump and how this will be altered with global warming.