Size fractionated biomass and productivity of phytoplankton and new production in the Prydz Bay and the adjacent Indian sector of the Southern Ocean during the austral summer 1998/1999

The paper deals with the studies on the cell abundance, the composition of dominant species, size fractionated biomass and productivity of phytoplankton, new production, the environmentally restricted mechanism in the Prydz Bay and the adjacent Indian sector of the Southern Ocean during the austral summer 1998/1999. The results showed that there was marked feature of spatial zonation in the sea areas investigated. In the Prydz Bay and its adjacent continental shelf, the biomass and productivity of phytoplankton were high; those of continental slope and open ocean area were obviously low.The nutrient concentration had opposite distribution trend, due to the consumption of phytoplankton. It mainly affected by the vertical stability of water column, grazing pressure of zooplankton, temperature and light etc. The results of size-fractionation showed that the average contribution of netplankton to total chlorophyll a in studied sea areas was 52.2 %, those of nano- and picoplankton were 29.4 % and 18.4 %, respectively. The average contribution of netplankton to total primary production was 52.4 %,those of nano- and picoplankton were 28.7% and 18.9%, separately. It is same as previous conclusion that the contribution of picoplankton to productivity is slightly larger than that to biomass of phytoplankton communities. The average new production and f-ratio were 230.6 mg/ (m2 ·d) and 0.43, respectively.