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"By April 11," WHOI biologist Carin Ashjian wrote in a dispatch from the field, "the ice has increasing amounts of ice algae growing in and on the
underside of the slabs, so that when the ice is turned over as the ship passes,
the bottom is brown with algae. The darker brown color is ice algae growing in
and on the ice underside. This algae is eaten by animals living in the
ice or that scrape algae off the underside of the ice. The algae also
eventually falls off of the ice and may be eaten by plankton in the
water column or sink to the seafloor where it is eaten by the benthos (seafloor-swelling organisms)."
(Photo by Carin Ashjian, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
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Posted: June 20, 2008
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