Heavy Metal Smoke on the Water

Abstract

In the late 1980s oceanographers were puzzled by the Southern Ocean because satellite images attuned to chlorophyll wavelengths showed very low levels of chlorophyll, despite samples of the water being rich in nutrients like nitrate, phosphate and silicate, conventionally regarded as the factors limiting plankton growth. Unable to explain why the phytoplankton were not growing to use the available nutrients, a safe response was simply to name the phenomenon: such waters were termed High-Nitrate, LowChlorophyll (HNLC).