A group of researchers from three Japanese universities has discovered why the western subarctic Pacific Ocean, which accounts for only 6 percent of the world’s oceans, produces an estimated 26 percent of the world’s marine resources.
A group of researchers from three Japanese universities has discovered why the western subarctic Pacific Ocean, which accounts for only 6 percent of the world’s oceans, produces an estimated 26 percent of the world’s marine resources.
Japan neighbors this ocean area, known for rich marine resources including salmon and trout. The area, located at the termination of the global ocean circulation called the ocean conveyor belt, has one of the largest biological carbon dioxide draw-downs of the world’s oceans.
The study, led by Hokkaido University, the University of Tokyo and Nagasaki University, showed that water rich in nitrate, phosphate and silicate – essential chemicals for producing phytoplankton – is pooled in the intermediate water (from several hundred meters to a thousand meters deep) in the western subarctic area, especially in the Bering Sea basin. Nutrients are uplifted from the deep ocean through the intermediate water to the surface, and then return to the intermediate nutrient pool as sinking particles through the biological production and microbial degradation of organic substances.
Read more at Hokkaido University
Image: Phosphate accumulates in high concentrations in intermediate water in the entire subpolar Pacific region. CREDIT: Jun Nishioka, et al., PNAS, May 27, 2020
