Phytoplankton composition and its ecological effect in subsurface cold pool of the northern Bering Sea in summer as revealed by HPLC derived pigment signatures

CHEMTAX analysis of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) pigment was conducted to study phytoplankton community structure in the northern Bering Sea shelf, where a seasonal subsurface cold pool emerges. The results showed that fucoxanthin (Fuco) and chlorophyll a (Chl a) were the most abundant diagnostic pigments, with the integrated water column values ranging from 141 to 2 160 μg/m2 and 477 to 5 535 μg/m2, respectively. Moreover, a diatom bloom was identified at Sta. BB06 with the standing stock of Fuco up to 9 214 μg/m3. The results of CHEMTAX suggested that the phytoplankton community in the northern Bering Sea shelf was dominated by diatoms and chrysophytes with an average relative contribution to Chl a of 80% and 12%, respectively, followed by chlorophytes, dinoflagellates, and cryptophytes. Diatoms were the absolutely dominant algae in the subsurface cold pool with a relative contribution exceeding 90%, while the contribution of chrysophytes was generally higher in oligotrophic upper water. Additionally, the presence of a cold pool would tend to favor accumulation of diatom biomass and a bloom that occurred beneath the halocline would be beneficial to organic matter sinks, which suggests that a large part of the phytoplankton biomass would settle to the seabed and support a rich benthic biomass.