During its active operation from 1973 to 1990 the Black Angel Mine in West Greenland disposed its tailings in seawater slurry to a fjord. During the disposal between 10 and 30 tons of lead and between 30 and 55 tons of zinc dissolved annually in the receiving sea water. This resulted in a significant pollution of the surrounding marine environment. Other pollution sources, particularly waste ro...

Investigations on the epizoic fauna of Gadus morhua (L.), Platichthys flesus (L.) and Oncorhynchus mykiss (Walbaum) from the Kiel Fjord and Kiel Bight were carried out from September 1996 to March 1997. Smears from 120 G. morhua and 92 P. flesus caught using fish traps and trammel nets, and of 35 O. mykiss obtained from a local fish farm in the Kiel Fjord revealed the presence of three species ...

The living benthic foraminiferal assemblages in Kiel Fjord (SW Baltic Sea) were investigated in the years 2005 and 2006. The faunal studies were accomplished by geochemical analyses of surface sediments. In general, sediment pollution by copper, zinc, tin and lead is assessed as moderate in comparison with levels reported from other areas of the Baltic Sea. However, the inner Kiel Fjord is stil...

Cold-water corals provide an important habitat for a rich fauna along the continental margins and slopes. Although these azooxanthellate corals are considered particularly sensitive to ocean acidification, their responses to natural variations in pH and aragonite saturation are largely unknown due to the difficulty of studying their ecology in deep waters. Previous SCUBA investigations have sho...

Fjords are recognized as hotspots of organic carbon (OC) burial in the coastal ocean. In fjords with glaciated catchments, glacier discharge carries large amounts suspended matter. This sedimentary load includes OC from bedrock and terrigenous sources (modern vegetation, peat, soil deposits), which is either buried fjord or remineralized during export, acting a potential source CO2 to atmospher...

High Calanus finmarchicus abundances were recorded in wintertime in Vestfjorden, close to the main cod breeding grounds off Lofoten and Vesterålen, northern Norway. The mean abundance for locations with water depth >500 m was ∼37000 ind. m-2 (range: 26700-49000 ind. m-2). To our knowledge, this is the first report of massive overwintering of C. finmarchicus on the Norwegian shelf. Because of th...

The method of iterated conformal maps allows one to study the harmonic measure of diffusion-limited aggregates with unprecedented accuracy. We employ this method to explore the multifractal properties of the measure, including the scaling of the measure in the deepest fjords that were hitherto screened away from any numerical probing. We resolve probabilities as small as 10(-35), and present an...

The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice at accelerating rates, much of which is a response to oceanic forcing, especially of the floating ice shelves. Recent observations establish a clear correspondence between the increased delivery of oceanic heat to the ice-sheet margin and increased ice loss. In Antarctica, most of these processes are reasonably well understood but have n...

Shallow nearshore habitats are highly valued for supporting marine ecosystems, but are subject to intense human-induced pressures. Mesopredatory fish are key components in coastal food webs, and alterations in their abundance may have evident effects also on other parts of the ecosystem. The aim of this study was to clarify the relationship between the abundance of coastal mesopredatory fish, d...