Copepods in Fram Strait in summer: distribution, feeding and metabolism

A summer study of zooplankton in the Fram Strait area of the Greenland Sea showed elevated abundances of herbivorous copepods in the marginal ice zone or ice-edge compared with copepod communities under the pack ice cover. Several physical factors contributed to this, including the large-scale current systems which deliver both North Atlantic and Arctic plankton to the ice-edge and the effect of melting ice and eddies in increasing primary productivity and standing stocks of phytoplankton. Abundances of female copepods at the ice-edge were largely a function of currents, while growth of juveniles was dependent on food supply which even at the ice-edge fell short of the calculated requirements of the dominant copepods. -from Author