Plant production on the Fladen ground

Abstract

The quantitative study of phytoplankton production may be pursued in many ways, but these ways can be divided into two general methods of approach. There is, first, the direct estimation of a production rate for a particular sample of the population; for example, the light-dark bottle technique for measuring oxygen production (Gaarder & Gran, 1927; Riley, 1939) and the new 14C technique (Steeman Nielsen, 1952). These estimates are made under conditions which must be, to some extent, artificial. Secondly, there is the direct estimation of relevant variables in the sea (phosphate, oxygen, chlorophyll concentration, etc.) from which production is calculated on the basis of hypotheses about the behaviour of phytoplankton. These hypotheses are, of necessity, simplifications of a mass of laboratory experiments and of previous field work. Riley, Stommel & Bumpus (1949) give a full account of this approach and of the difficulties involved in it.