A Kraft

AS Båtnes

CN Webster

D Piepenburg

G Johnsen

J Berge

Jørgen Berge

M Daase

N Morata

Ole Jørgen Lønne

S Falk-Petersen

Stig Falk-Petersen

TA Brown

V Smetacek

Crossref

EDITORIALIntroduction to the special issue on polar night studies conductedonboard RV Helmer Hanssen in the Svalbard areaOle Jørgen Lønne • Stig Falk-Petersen •Jørgen BergeReceived: 23 October 2014 / Revised: 28 October 2014 / Accepted: 28 October 2014 / Published online: 5 November 2014 The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.comIntroductionPolar night studies at high latitudes have during the lastyears become a major research focus for ARCTOSresearchers, spearheaded by research cruises lead by UiTand MSc/PhD courses lead by UNIS. During the last4 years, the RV Helmer Hanssen have been assigned toconduct research well into the nautical polar night (Bergeet al. in press), a temporal and spatial part of the ArcticOcean that until now have remained more or lessunstudied.For a long time, ice-covered areas of the Arctic werepresumed to be unproductive and early scientific studies inthe Arctic generally supported this paradigm (Nansen1902). Evidence of human settlements in the high Arcticover several thousand years, however, conflicted with theseearly observations and constituted a paradox as to howhuman populations could subsist in regions considered tobe biological deserts. Further investigations revealed theexistence of productivity hot spots on par with some of themost productive places on earth and provided the firstindications of complexity and the importance of the linksbetween ice, ocean, and land in Arctic ecosystems. Duringthe last 20 years, culminating with the third InternationalPolar Year (IPY 2007–2009), however, national andinternational research efforts in the Arctic have sharplyincreased. This increase in attention and research effortsare paralleled by an increased awareness of both the fish-eries and petroleum resources available at high latitudes aswell as new shipping routes emerging following a reduc-tion of the Arctic ice cover (see e.g. Barber et al. in press).Despite the fact that attention, awareness and researchefforts have increased, there are still major and funda-mental gaps in knowledge, preventing a holistic under-standing of the Arctic as a single, linked system undergoingunprecedented change and in an earth science perspective.Perhaps the most obvious and largest of these known gapsis centred around the widely accepted paradigm that Arcticmarine ecosystems are best compared with a marine desertduring the long and dark polar night. Just as the paradigmof the Arctic Ocean being an unproductive biotope wasrefuted a hundred years ago, the prevailing view of thepolar night as devoid of biological activity has recentlybeen challenged (Berge et al. in press for a review).Highlights and outlookHere we report on a diverse set of biological studies, allconducted onboard the RV Helmer Hanssen in January2012 and 2013, reporting on various aspects of polar nightbiology (Fig. 1). This special issue can roughly be dividedinto three categories: (1) studies with light as the maintheme, including solar, lunar, and biologically producedlight; Johnsen et al. (2014) on bioluminescence, Websteret al. (2013) on influence of moon on nekton, Morata, andSoreide (2013) on effect of light on Calanus spp., andThis article belongs to the special Polar Night issue, coordinated byOle Jørgen Lønne.O. J. Lønne (&)  J. BergeUniversity Centre in Svalbard, POB 156, 9171 Longyearbyen,Norwaye-mail: ole.jorgen.lonne@unis.noS. Falk-Petersen  J. BergeFaculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics,University of Tromsø, 9037 Tromso¨, NorwayS. Falk-PetersenAkvaplan-niva, Fram Centre, 9296 Tromso¨, Norway123Polar Biol (2015) 38:1–3DOI 10.1007/s00300-014-1616-5Ba˚tnes et al. (2013) on detection limits of light in Calanusspp.; (2) Process studies on linkages between pelagic/sympagic and benthos, including biomarker indicators:Morata et al. (2013) on benthic activities, Brown et al.(2013) on biomarkers, Falk-Petersen et al. (2014) onupwelling processes assumed to fuel biological productionregimes; (3) Pelagic communities and biology: Grigor et al.(2014) on chaetognaths, Vader et al. (2014) on photo-trophs, and Blachowiach-Samolyk et al. (2014) on meso-zooplankton communities.In combination, these ten papers represent a majorincrease in our general knowledge, concerning biologicalpatterns and processes characteristic of the polar night.Also, and equally important, all ten papers are directlybased upon two relatively short (10 days) scientific cruisesnorth of Svalbard in January 2012 and 2013. The fact thatthese ten papers, in addition to other papers publishedelsewhere (Berge et al. 2012; Kraft et al. 2012; Daase et al.2014) are all direct outcomes of two such short cruises,illustrate the fact that the polar night at high latitude con-stitute one major gap in current knowledge. The magnitudeof this gap has only recently have become evident (seeBerge et al. in press for a review). Herein, we present tendedicated and focused studies on different aspects of polarnight ecology and biological oceanography (see Fig. 1).Results include studies on the small green alga Micro-monas pusilla and the haptophyte Phaeocystis pouchetii—two key phototrophs in the Arctic, commonly bloomingduring the arctic spring and summer. As was expected,chlorophyll concentrations were very low during our studyperiod and across our study area (78–81N). Vader et al.(2014) showed, using a molecular approach, that M. pusillaand P. pouchetii are widely distributed in Svalbard watersalso at the height of the polar night. Both species weredetected in pelagic samples from both fjords and the openocean, ice-covered and ice-free locations, shallow and deepwater and from Atlantic, Arctic, and Coastal water masses.The presence of these phytoplankton species shows thatoverwintering cells are present and ready to bloom as soonas the sun returns in late March. In a different study,Błachowiak-Samołyk et al. (2014) showed that a large partof the herbivorous community had already stared tomigrate into the upper water layers, both in Rijpfjorden andthe Fram Strait. This upward migration occured 2 monthsbefore the return of the sunlight and onset of the primaryproduction. In another study, Falk-Petersen et al. (2014)were able to relate the absence of ice and prevailing winddirections with a pronounced upwelling along the conti-nental slope North of Svalbard. This upwelling event,driven by the combination of little ice and easterly winds,is hypothesised to create a similar condition to those thatonce supported the large stocks of bowhead whales beforethey were hunted to near extinction in the late 1700s (Falk-Petersen et al. 2014).The three papers highlighted here (section above) rep-resent only three out of ten papers, and only three outseveral topics, all centred around polar night in the Arctic.As is evident from the summary of all titles and keywords(Fig. 1), there is a general focus on ‘‘light’’ and ‘‘food’’among the studies—both ‘‘topics’’ generally considered tobe limited during the polar night. Polar marine ecosystemprocesses, as in all other ecosystems, are direct conse-quences of the complex behaviours and interactionsbetween organisms, many of which are driven by thephysical environment. Accordingly, a classical paradigm inArctic marine ecology suggests that most biological pro-cesses stop during the polar night at high latitudes due tolow food availability and the lack of light (Smetacek andNicol 2005; Piepenburg 2005). Recently, this assumptionwas challenged by presenting evidence of diel verticalmigration (DVM) of zooplankton during the polar night(Berge et al. 2009). This discovery initiated a large range ofdiverse studies, most presenting unexpected new discov-eries of a system in full operation and with high activitylevels. The results presented in this volume is a naturalextension of the work published so far on polar nightecology and is an important contribution towards ourgeneral understanding of the Arctic marine system. Not theleast, and based on the findings both included in this vol-ume and previous reports (see Berge et al. in press for areview), the current reduction of Arctic sea ice is likely tohave both a direct and indirect impact on marine organ-isms, their interactions, and ultimately ecosystem pro-cesses. But without a more fundamental perception ofArctic ecosystem function, such impacts will remain lar-gely impossible to understand and predict. Winter ecologyof Arctic marine systems, then, is a largely new field ofFig. 1 Word cloud highlighting the most common used words in thetitles and keywords of all the 10 papers included in this special issue.The size of the word reflect how many times they are occurring intitles, abstracts, and keywords2 Polar Biol (2015) 38:1–3123science with the potential for radically altering our fun-damental perception of basic Arctic ecosystems processes,current state of the ecosystem and connections between thebiosphere, hydrosphere and cryosphere within the PolarRegion. To this end, this volume and the ten papersincluded are important and significant steps towards a moreholistic and general understanding of the Arctic marineecosystem.Acknowledgments We would like to thank all the reviewers on theindividual manuscripts that together make up this special issue.Thanks to them and their constructive suggestions it is possible topublish this rather unique collection of information on polar nightecology. Moreover, we gratefully acknowledge the input and teameffort from all the participants of the two polar night cruises in 2012and 2013, and for their willingness to publish their results in thisspecial issue. Last but not least, we thank the editor in chief of PolarBiology Dieter Piepenburg, and his team, for the help and guidanceneeded to put this collection of manuscripts together. This specialissue is a contribution to the Marine Night project (project number226417) funded by the Norwegian Research Council.Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, dis-tribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the originalauthor(s) and the source are credited.ReferencesBarber DG, Hop H, Mundy CJ, Else B, Dmitrenko IA, Tremblay J-E,Ehn JK, Assmy P, Daase M, Candlish LM (in press) Selectedphysical, biological and biogeochemical implications of a rapidlychanging Arctic Marginal Ice Zone. Progress in OceanographyBa˚tnes AS, Miljeteig C, Berge J, Greenacre M, Johnsen G (2013)Quantifying the light sensitivity of Calanus spp. during the polarnight: potential for orchestrated migrations conducted by ambi-ent light from the sun, moon, or aurora borealis? Polar. doi:10.1007/s00300-013-1415-4Berge J, Cottier FR, Last KS et al. (2009) Diel vertical migration ofArctic zooplankton during the polar night. Biol Lett 5:69–72.doi:10.1098/rsbl.2008.0484Berge J, Varpe O, Moline MA, Wold A, Renaud PE, Daase M, Falk-Petersen S (2012) Retention of ice-associated amphipods:possible consequences for an ice-free Arctic Ocean. Biol Lett8(6):1012–1015. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2012.0517Berge J, Renaud PE, Darnis G, Cottier F, Last K, Gabrielsen TM,Johnsen G, Seuthe L, Weslawski JM, Leu E, Moline M,Nahrgang J, Søreide JE, Varpe Ø, Lønne OJ, Daase M, Falk-Petersen S (in press) In the dark: paradigms of Arctic ecosystemsduring polar night challenged by new understanding. Progress inOceanographyBrown TA, Hegseth EN, Belt ST (2013) A biomarker-basedinvestigation of the mid-winter ecosystem in Rijpfjorden. PolarBiology, Svalbard. doi:10.1007/s00300-013-1352-2Blachowiach-Samolyk K, Wiktor JM, Hegseth EN, Wold A, Falk-Petersen S Kubiszyn AM (2014) Winter Tales—the dark side ofplanktonic lifeDaase M, Varpe O, Falk-Petersen S (2014) Non-consumptivemortality in copepods: occurrence of Calanus spp. carcasses inthe Arctic Ocean during winter. J Plankton Res 36(1):129–144.doi:10.1093/plankt/fbt079Falk-Petersen S, Pavlov V, Berge J, Cottier F, Kovacs KM, LydersenC (2014) At the rainbow’s end: high productivity fueled bywinter upwelling along an Arctic shelf. Polar Biol. doi:10.1007/s00300-014-1482-1Grigor JJ, Marais A, Falk-Petersen S, Varpe Ø (2014) Polar nightecology of a pelagic predator, the chaetognath Parasagitta elegansJohnsen G, Candeloro M, Berge J, Moline M (2014) Glowing in thedark: discriminating patterns of bioluminescence from differenttaxa during the Arctic polar night. Polar Biol 37(5):707–713.doi:10.1007/s00300-014-1471-4Kraft A, Berge J, Varpe Ø, Falk-Petersen S (2012) Feeding in Arcticdarkness: mid-winter diet of the pelagic amphipods Themistoabyssorum and T. libellula. Mar Biol 160(1):241–248. doi:10.1007/s00227-012-2065-8Morata N, Soreide JE (2013) Effect of light and food on themetabolism of the Arctic copepod Calanus glacialis. Polar Biol.doi:10.1007/s00300-013-1417-2Morata N, Michaud E, Włodarska-Kowalczuk M (2013) Impact ofearly food input on the Arctic benthos activities during the polarnight. Polar Biol. doi:10.1007/s00300-013-1414-5Nansen F (1902) Norwegian North Polar Expedition 1893–1896,Scientific Results Vol 3: The Oceanography of the North PoleBasin. Longmans, Green, Toronto, CanadaPiepenburg D (2005) Recent research on Arctic benthos: commonnotions need to be revised. Polar Biol 28:733–755. doi:10.1007/s00300-005-0013-5Smetacek V, Nicol S (2005) Polar ocean ecosystems in a changingworld. Nature 437:362–368. doi:10.1038/nature04161Vader A, Marquardt M, Meshram AR, Gabrielsen T (2014). KeyArctic phototrophs are widespread in the polar nightWebster CN, Varpe Ø, Falk-Petersen S, Berge J, Stu¨bner E, BrierleyAS (2013) Moonlit swimming: vertical distributions of macro-zooplankton and nekton during the polar night. Polar Biol.doi:10.1007/s00300-013-1422-5Polar Biol (2015) 38:1–3 3123

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Introduction to the special issue on polar night studies conducted onboard RV Helmer Hanssen in the Svalbard area

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Introduction to the special issue on polar night studies conducted onboard RV Helmer Hanssen in the Svalbard area

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