Zooplankton of the Frontal Zone of the Gulf Stream
(Region of the Newfoundland Banks Slope)

M. E. Vinogradov¹ and G. M. Vinogradov²

¹ Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

² Severtsov Institute for Problems of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

Received January 28, 2002

Abstract—During the past few years, from 1995 to 2001, the vertical distribution of meso- and macroplankton
over the entire water column (0–3700 m) has been studied at the front of the Gulf Stream within a fixed area
centered at 41°44 N, 49°55 W. In order to cover the widest possible size spectrum of plankton, in collecting
the materials we used 150-l bottles, BR 113/140 closing plankton nets, Isaacs–Kidd midwater trawls, and visual
counting from the Mir submersibles. The mesoplankton supplied from the north to the frontal zone, loses its
activity and dies out, providing an easy food for macroplanktonic necrophagous predators from the community
of the North Atlantic Anticyclonic Gyre. These carnivores are mainly represented by the pelagic shrimps Acan-
thephyra, which forms a sort of a live network that eats out the mesoplankton supplied. In so doing, at a depth
of 600–1300 m and deeper, their biomass may exceed the biomass of mesoplankton by a factor of 6–25. Here,
the total zooplankton biomass in the layer 0–3000 m may reach 125–180 g/m³, which is higher than in the most
productive boreal regions of the ocean. Depending on the Gulf Stream meandering, the frontal zone either
crossed the site or moved south or north of it. In the years when the front moved far away from the site, the
pattern changed and the number of shrimps decreased significantly. The portion of the frontal zone studied may
probably be regarded as a region for commercial fishery of mesopelagic fishes.

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