The snow crab <i>Chionoecetes opilio</i> Fabricius, 1788 is a newly established species in the Barents Sea. Since the first individuals were recorded in 1996, the population has increased and a fishery was initiated in 2012. Mature female snow crab caught in the central Barents Sea were investigated with regards to fecundity. Ovigerous females (<i>N</i> = 185) ranged from 48 to 100 mm carapace width ...

Trait-based approaches connect the traits of species to ecosystem functions to estimate the functional diversity of communities and how they may respond to environmental change. For the first time, we compiled a traits matrix across 11 traits for 28 species of Arctic ice meiofauna, including Copepoda (Subclass), Nematoda (Phylum), Acoela (Order), Rotifera (Phylum), and Cnidaria (Phylum). Over 50 years ...

Assessment of Arctic deep-sea ecosystem functioning is currently an urgent task considering that ongoing sea-ice reduction opens opportunities for resource exploitation of yet understudied deep-sea regions. We used Biological Trait Analysis to evaluate ecosystem functioning and test if common paradigms for deep-sea fauna apply to benthic epifauna of the deep-sea Arctic Chukchi Borderland (CBL). We ...

Sea-ice declines in the European Arctic have led to substantial changes in marine food webs. To better understand the biological implications of these changes, we quantified the contributions of ice-associated and pelagic carbon sources to the diets of Arctic harp and ringed seals using compound-specific stable isotope ratios of fatty acids in specific primary producer biomarkers derived from sea-ice ...

The sustainable development and environmental protection of the Arctic ecosystem is on the agenda globally. The Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals call for conserving at least 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas globally. Management tools to achieve this goal include marine protected areas (MPAs) and “other effective area-based conservation ...

The Norwegian coastline covers more than 10° in latitude and provides a range in abiotic and biotic conditions for seaweed farming. In this study, we compared the effects of cultivation depth and season on the increase in biomass (frond length and biomass yield), chemical composition (protein, tissue nitrogen, intracellular nitrate and ash content) and biofouling (total cover and species composition) ...

Kelps play important roles in ecosystems as they provide structural habitat and protection, and supply food. Given these beneficial roles and observed increases in seaweed biomass and distribution ranges across the Arctic, mapping kelp occurrence around Arctic coasts is both timely and necessary for future conservation. Here, we fill spatial gaps in the knowledge of kelp distribution in the southern ...

<i>Apherusa glacialis</i> is a common, sea ice-associated amphipod found throughout the Arctic Ocean and has long been considered permanently associated with the sea ice habitat. However, pelagic occurrences of <i>A. glacialis</i> have also been reported. It was recently suggested that <i>A. glacialis</i> overwinters at depth within the Atlantic-water inflow near Svalbard, to avoid being exported ...

Pelagic–benthic coupling describes the connection between surface-water production and seafloor habitats via energy, nutrient and mass exchange. Massive ice loss and warming in the poorly studied Arctic Chukchi Borderland are hypothesized to affect this coupling. The strength of pelagic–benthic coupling was compared between 2 years varying in climate settings, 2005 and 2016, based on δ¹³C and ...

Stable isotope ratios of nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) of benthic primary consumers are often significantly related to water depth. This relationship is commonly attributed to preferential uptake of ¹⁴N from sinking particulate organic matter (POM) by microbes, and suggests that relationships between δ¹⁵N and water depth may be affected by local POM sources and flux dynamics. ...