L.V. Stelmakh , E.Yu. Georgieva

The A.O. Kovalevsky Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2, Nakhimov av., Sevastopol 99011, Crimea, Ukraine
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Marine Science, 2014, Vol. 4, No. 17   doi: 10.5376/ijms.2014.04.0017
Received: 20 Dec., 2013    Accepted: 20 Jan., 2014    Published: 24 Feb., 2014

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Stelmakh and Georgieva, 2014, Emiliania huxleyi Spring Bloom in the Black Sea: A Tentative Investigation, International Journal of Marine Science, Vol.4, No.17: 160-165 (doi: 10.5376/ijms.2014.04.0017)

This investigation was carried out in the surface water layer of some coastal and open-sea zones of the Black Sea in May 2013 when a spring bloom of Emiliania huxleyi was developing. The numbers of E. huxleyi in the blooming sea surface varied from 1.3 to 4.3·10⁶ cell/l amounting on the average to 94 % of the total phytoplankton abundance. The bloom emerged as a response to favourable light, temperature and nutrient conditions which have accelerated the phytoplankton growth to 0.80 – 1.44 d^-1 while the predatory pressure of microzooplankton on this coccolithophore remained low. High net growth rate of the phytoplankton (0.40 –1.00 d^-1) and low ratios of the specific microzooplankton grazing rate to the specific phytoplankton growth rate (34% on the average) in the seawater area can be interpreted as the evidence of beginning bloom. 

Black Sea; Phytoplankton growth rate; Microzooplankton grazing; Chlorophyll-a