A New Dead Zone In The Indian Ocean Could Impact Future Marine Nutrient Balance
Large areas of the global ocean, so called marine ‘dead zones’ contain no oxygen and support microbial processes that remove vast amounts of nitrogen from the global ocean. Nitrogen is a key nutrient for life. These dead zones are well known off the western coasts of North and South America, off the coast of Namibia and off the west coast of India in the Arabian Sea.
This research was conducted as cooperation between the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), the Max Planck Institute (MPIMM) for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) of India.
Using newly developed oxygen-sensing technology, the researchers demonstrated that some oxygen does exist in the Bay of Bengal waters, but at concentrations much less than standard techniques could detect, and some 10,000 times less than that found in the air-saturated surface waters. The researchers also discovered that the Bay of Bengal hosts microbial communities that can remove nitrogen, as in other well-known “dead zones” and even some evidence that they do remove nitrogen, but at really slow rates.
Bristow continues: “We have this crazy situation in the Bay of Bengal where the microbes are poised and ready to remove lots more nitrogen than they do, but the trace amounts of oxygen keep them from doing so”. Wajih Naqvi, former director of NIO, and a co-author of the study, adds: “Remove the last amounts of oxygen, and the Bay of Bengal could become a major global player in nitrogen removal from the oceans”. Removing more nitrogen from the oceans could affect the marine nitrogen balance and rates of marine productivity.
Globally, warming of the atmosphere through climate change is predicted to lead to an expansion of ‘dead zones’ in the ocean. It is currently unclear whether climate change would lead to the removal of these last traces of oxygen from the Bay of Bengal waters.
Contacts and sources:
Dr. Laura Bristow, Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen
Dr. Manfred Schlösser, Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, BremenCitation: L.A. Bristow, C.M. Callbeck, M. Larsen, M.A. Altabet, J. Dekaezemacker, M. Forth, M. Gauns, R.N. Glud, M.M.M. Kuypers, G. Lavik, J. Milucka, S.W.A. Naqvi, A. , Pratihary, N.P. Revsbech, B. Thamdrup, A.H. Treusch, D.E. Canfield
N2 production rates limited by nitrite availability in the Bay of Bengal oxygen
minimum zone.
Nature Geoscience; 5 December, 2016 DOI
Source:
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