The same gel-like mucus secreted by sea-ice algae as a kind of antifreeze against temperatures well below minus 10 C is also allowing algae to sculpt microscopic channels and pores in ice that are hospitable to itself and other microorganisms.
Altering ice to their benefit should help sea-ice algae adapt to a warming world, which is good news for hungry fish and shellfish farther up the food web, but what it means for the integrity of the ice itself raises unanswered questions according to Jody Deming, University of Washington professor of oceanography and co-author of a paper appearing in the March 1 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Ice riddled with more channels and pores will be weaker, yet such openings plugged with algal secretions actually hold more salty water and thus may slow melting in the spring and summer, she says. Scientists have yet to determine if the two processes cancel each other or if one will dominate, say Deming and co-authors Christopher Krembs, Washington State Department of Ecology, and Hajo Eicken, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Sea ice is home to microscopic plants and animals, bacteria and viruses that stay alive in brine-filled openings in the ice. The gel-like mucus secreted by ice algae and other microorganisms, called extracellular polysaccharide substances, consists of complex sugar compounds. The mucus depresses the freezing point and keeps pore spaces in ice filled with at least some liquid.
The researchers focused on the algae that dominate the sea-ice biota across the Arctic each spring and in particular the variety Melosira arctica. Individually, Melosira arctica are about 50 micrometers long, or the width of a strand of human hair. Joined together, however, they form filaments that are meters long. Under-ice divers witness great forests of the algae hanging underwater from the sea ice each spring, Deming says.
