Abundance, biomass and composition of the ice algal and phytoplankton communities were investigated in the southeastern Laptev Sea in spring 1999.Diatoms dominated the algal communities and pennate diatoms dominated the diatom population. 12 dominant algal species occurred within sea ice and underlying water column, including Fragilariopsis oceanica, F. cylindrus, Nitzschia frigida , N. promare, Achnanthes taeniata , Nitzschia neofrigida , Navicula pelagica , N. vanhoef fenii, N. septentrionalis, Melosira arctica , Clindrotheca closterium and Pyramimonas sp. The algal abundance of bottom 10 cm sea ice varied between 14.6 and 1562.2 × 104 cells l-1 with an average of 639.0 × 104cells l-1 , and the algal biomass ranged from 7.89 to 2093.5 μg C l-1 with an average of 886.9 μg C l-1 , which were generally one order of magnitude higher than those of sub-bottom ice and two orders of magnitude higher than those of underlying surface water. The integrated algal abundance and biomass of lowermost 20 cm ice column were averagely 7.7 and 12.2 times as those of upper 20 m water column, respectively, suggesting that the ice algae might play an important role in maintaining the coastal marine ecosystem before the thawing of sea ice. Ice algae influenced the phytoplankton community of the underlying water column.However, the "seeding" of ice algae for phytoplankton bloom was negligible because of the low phytoplankton biomass within the underlying water column.
The sea ice community plays an important role in the Arctic marine ecosystem. Because of the predicted environmental changes in the Arctic environment and specifically related to sea ice, the Arctic pack ice biota has received more attention in recent years using modern ice-breaking research vessels. Studies show that the Arctic pack ice contains a diverse biota and besides ice algae, the bacterial and protozoan biomasses can be high. Surprisingly high primary production values were observed in the pack ice of the central Arctic Ocean. Occasionally biomass maximum were discovered in the interior of the ice floes, a habitat that had been ignored in most Arctic studies. Many scientific questions, which deserve special attention, remained unsolved due to logistic limitations and the sea ice characteristics. Little is know about the pack ice community in the central Arctic Ocean. Almost no data exists from the pack ice zone for the winter season. Concerning the abundance of bacteria and protozoa, more studies are needed to understand the microbial network within the ice and its role in material and energy flows. The response of the sea ice biota to global change will impact the entire Arctic marine ecosystem and a long-term monitoring program is needed. The techniques, that are applied to study the sea ice biota and the sea ice ecology, should be improved.
Microorganisms living in polar zones play an important part as the potential source of organic activity materials with low temperature characteristics in the biotechnological applications. A psychrotrophic bacterium (strain Ar/w/b/75°/10/5), producing cellulase at low temperatures during late-exponential and early-stationary phases of cell growth, was isolated from sea ice-covered surface water in Chuckchi Sea, Arctic. This bacterium, with rod cells, was Gram-negative, slightly halophilic. Colony growing on agar plate was in black. Optimum growth temperature was 15℃. No cell growth was observed at 35℃ or above. Optimum salt concentration for cell growth was between 2 and 3 % of sodium chloride in media. Maximal cellulase activity was detected at a temperature of 35℃ and pH8. Cellulase was irreversibly inactivated when incubated at 55℃ within 30 min. Enzyme can be kept stable at the temperature no higher than 25℃. Of special interest was that this bacterium produced various extracellular enzymes including cellulase, amylase, agar hydrolase and protease, at low or moderate temperature conditions, which is certainly of it potential value for applications.
