The Marine Realm Around Iceland: A Review of Biological Research

Iceland is surrounded by a shelf with depths down to 200–500 m along its 6000 km long coastline. The tidal range is highest in the south and west, and the intertidal zone is relatively narrow in northern and eastern Iceland. Relative warm high-salinity North Atlantic Water is brought to the South and West Iceland shelf by the Irminger Current flowing clockwise around the island. The marine Polar Front with steep temperature and salinity gradients separates the Atlantic Water and the cold lower salinity Polar and Arctic waters of the East Greenland and East Icelandic Currents. The oceanography north of Iceland is highly unstable. A coastal water mass follows the coastline and shallow parts of the Icelandic shelf, flowing clockwise around Iceland. The modern marine fauna is composed of boreal and subarctic-boreal species, but also some arctic species. Several hundreds of species new to the Icelandic fauna and at least 29 mollusc species new to science were recorded when the BIOICE sampling was completed in 2004 based on sampling down to 3000 m. Up to then, sampling had been limited to c. 400 m, and most of the data had been published in issues of The Zoology of Iceland.