Long-Term Investigation of Spatio-Temporal Variations in Faunal Composition and Species Richness of Megabenthos in Ise Bay,Central Japan

Based on our long-term data from megabenthos sampling from 1993 to 2002 in Ise Bay, central Japan, we examined spatio-temporal variations in taxon composition, species richness and its distribution of megabenthos in the bay in relation to the occurrence of the oxygen-poor water (i.e. oxygen content less than 3 ppm) in bottom waters of the bay. A total of 261 species were identified including 6 cnidarians, 1 tentaculate, 5 annelids, 71 molluscs, 72 crustaceans, 16 echinoderms, 12 urochordates and 78 pisces. Of the most abundant 10 megabenthos species, the following 4 species of echinoderms made up more than the half of megabenthos biomass: Luidia quinaria, Echinocardium cordatum, Asterias amurensis and Astropecten scoparius. Species richness of megabenthos varied significantly between seasons and among stations. The severity and period of occurrence of the oxygen-poor water developing every summer play an important role in determining spatial distributions of species richness in the bay.     

合浦珠母贝26S蛋白酶体S4,S7亚基基因片段的分离与分析

26S蛋白酶体是真核生物中一种具有ATP依赖性的蛋白酶复合体,主要通过泛肽途径选择性降解细胞内与代谢调控、细胞周期有关的功能蛋白及异常蛋白,参与多种细胞活动的调控过程。26S蛋白酶体由具有催化活性的20S亚复合体和一个具有调节作用的19S亚复合体组成,其中19S亚复合体中的ATP酶亚基是调节26S蛋白酶体活性的重要组件。本通过简并引物PCR手段,从软体动物合浦珠母贝(Pinctada fucata)中扩增到参与构成19S亚复合体的S4和S7(MSS1)两个亚基的基因片段。这两个基因片段所编码的ATP酶组件包含有Gx4GKT,DEID,SAT和H／QRxGRxxR等26S蛋白酶体ATP酶亚基的共同功能基序。这是首次在软体动物中报道26S蛋白酶体的ATP酶亚基基因序列,为研究软体动物中26S蛋白酶体的结构与功能奠定了分子基础。     

多波束数据的海底数字地形模型构建

提出大批量多格式原始多波束数据的DTM构建方法，以满足大区域、大比例尺海底地形制图的需要。在多种格式原始多波束数据接口和系统内部标准数据结构的基础上，通过对数据文件、数据种类和数据运算量的有效组织管理，实施边读入、边权重配赋的网格插值，分析了高斯、指数和距离平方反比权重函数的适用性，及最小值、最大值和平均值的实用性。在权重配赋网格插值基础上，提出分形fBM和张力样条配合使用的方程式插值方法，保证DTM数据的有效外延和地形分辨。整套算法效率高，并能有效保证DTM的精度，对存储在外部介质的数据遍历一次即可完成网格插值。     

厦门海域鱼体稀土元素的生态化学特征

于1995—1996年在厦门海域采集了28种鱼类样品，用ICP—MS法测定了15种稀土元素(REE)的含量，研究了鱼体稀土元素的组成和分布模式及与海水环境之间的关系。结果表明，厦门海域鱼体REE总量介于12．4—596．5ng／g，平均为(77．5l2．8)岭g。鱼体明显官集轻稀土，同时轻、重稀土之间则存在较大的分馏作用，说明轻稀土的生物学效应比重稀土更为显著。鱼类稀土元素分布模式总体上与海水REE分布模式接近，并且鱼类REE含量与近岸陆架海水REE含量之间有很好的相关性，说明海洋鱼类对稀土元素的利用遵从丰度规律。鱼类对稀土元素的富集系数在103以上。稀土元素沿厦门海域食物链的迁移传递没有表现出明显的生物放大作用。     

Relationship between Salinity and Nutrients in the Subsurface Layer in the Suruga Bay

We investigated the water structure and nutrient distribution in the Suruga Bay from April 2000 to July 2002, especially the Offshore Water, which occupies a large part of the bay. The maximum salinity in the upper 200 m varied between 34.49 and 34.71, indicating a temporal change in the influence of Kuroshio Water on the Offshore Water. Seasonal variation in nutrient concentrations was largest from surface to 50 m. On the other hand, the variance in nutrient concentrations within each season was largest in the subsurface layer of 100–300 m in spring, summer and fall. In the Offshore Water, the change of nutrients was negatively correlated with that of salinity in each season. This suggests that an increasing intrusion of saline water brings about a lower nutrient concentration in the Offshore Water. Likewise, negative correlations were observed between the change of the maximum salinity and chlorophyll a (Δ [chl.a-int])/nutrients integrated in the upper 200 m. Δ[chl.a-int] was significantly correlated with the changes of nitrate and phosphorus, but there were no significant correlations between Δ[chl.a-int] and the change of silicate. These results suggest that the concentrations of chlorophyll a and nutrients in the Offshore Water were decreased due to the increasing intrusion of Kuroshio Water. The Offshore Water is likely to be related to the regulation of primary production by nitrate.     

Drag Coefficient,Dynamic Roughness and Reference Wind Speed

Surface waves are the roughness element of the ocean surface. The parameterization of the drag coefficient of the ocean surface is simplified by referencing to wind speed at an elevation proportional to the characteristic wavelength. The dynamic roughness is analytically related to the drag coefficient. Under the assumption of fetch limited wave growth condition, various empirical functions of the dynamic roughness can be converted to equivalent expressions for comparison. For datasets covering a wide range of the dimensionless frequency (inverse wave age), it is important to account for the variable rate of wave development at different wave ages. As a result, the dependence of the Charnock parameter on wave age is nonmonotonic. Finally, the analysis presented here suggests that the significant wave steepness is a sensitive property of the ocean surface and a single variable normalization of the dynamic roughness using a wavelength or wave height parameter actually produces more robust functions than bi-variable normalizations using wave height and wave slope.     

Seasonal and Spatial Variations of Total Mass Flux around Coral Reefs in the Southern Ryukyus,Japan

Total mass flux, size distribution of sediment particles and some chemical components such as total carbon (TC), total nitrogen (TN) and calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) were monitored monthly using a multi-cup sediment traps at seven coral reef sites (6 reef flat and 1 reef slope) of the Marine Protected Areas around Ishigaki, Kohama, Kuroshima and Iriomote Islands in the southern Ryukyus, Japan from September 2000 to September 2001. The size distribution of trapped sediments revealed mostly uni-modal fine sand to mud in the reef flat and gravelly to coarse sand in the reef slope. The total mass flux ranged between 0.54 to 872 gm⁻²d⁻¹, and showed a pronounced seasonality (high in summer-autumn and low in spring) at each site, which was consistent with the rainfall and typhoon regime. Exceptionally high values were observed on the reef slope (Iriomote) in February–March 2001 (1533 gm⁻²d⁻¹) owing to a large amount of bottom sediment re-suspension. On the reef flat (Todoroki South and North; Ishigaki), values obtained in July–August 2001 (872 gm⁻²d⁻¹) and August–September 2001 (800 gm^{− 2}d⁻¹) indicate the high terrestrial discharge from Todoroki River. Trapped sediment particles consist of CaCO₃ (1.2–27.1%) and a non-carbonate fraction (98.8–72.9%), which contains total carbon (4.9–26%), carbonate carbon (CO₂-C) (0.2–3.1%) and non-carbonate carbon (NC-C) (7.9–25.6%). Total nitrogen content was in the range 0.02–0.48%. TN is contained mainly in the carbonate fraction and NC-C may be contained in the non-carbonate fraction. The low TN/OC ratio of the trapped sediments suggests that they were mostly of terrestrial origin and that both fractions migrated. The high total mass flux derived from Todoroki River exceeded the threshold at which a lethal effect on coral community is caused. The results stress the importance of conducting seasonal studies of sedimentation over more than one year and at more than one location in south Japan coral reef ecosystems to gain an understanding of the processes controlling the total mass fluxes and their nutrients content, also to develop an awareness of how to prevent the damage of coral reef ecosystems and, if it does occur, to allow mitigation measures to be undertaken.     

Influence of Current Width Variation on the Annual Mean Transport of the East Sakhalin Current: A Simple Model

Recent observations suggest that the annual mean southward transport of the East Sakhalin Current (ESC) is significantly larger than the annual mean Sverdrup transport. Motivated by this observational result, transport of a western boundary current has been investigated using a simple numerical model with a western slope. This transport is defined as the instantaneous barotropic transport integrated from the western boundary to the offshore point where the barotropic velocity vanishes. The model, forced by seasonally varying wind stress, exhibits an annual mean of the western boundary current transport that is larger than that of the Sverdrup transport, as observed. The southward transport from October to March in the model nearly equals the instantaneous Sverdrup transport, while the southward transport from April to September decreases slowly. Although the Sverdrup transport in July vanishes, the southward transport in summer nearly maintains the annual mean Sverdrup transport, because the barotropic Rossby wave cannot intrude on the western slope. This summer transport causes the larger annual mean. Although there are some uncertainties in the estimation of the Sverdrup transport in the Sea of Okhotsk, the seasonal variation of the southward transport in the model is qualitatively similar to the observations.     

CHARACTERISTICS OF MAGNETIC LINEATIONS AND TECTONIC EVOLUTION OF THE SOUTH CHINA SEA BASIN

Based on the analysis of new data of a total of 60 000 km, the authors propose a new spreading model of the tectonic evolution of the South China Sea Basin and suggest that magnetic anomalies in the Basin are the magnetic anomalies of a new type in marginal basins, that the tectonic development of the Basin can be divided into three seafloor spreading phases and that the southward migration of spreading ridge is related to the asymmetric spreading.     

Seismic structure and tectonics of the Shackleton Fracture Zone (Drake Passage,Scotia Sea)

The structural framework of the southern part of the Shackleton Fracture Zone has been investigated through the analysis of a 130-km-long multichannel seismic reflection profile acquired orthogonally to the fracture zone near 60° S. The Shackleton Fracture Zone is a 800-km-long, mostly rectilinear and pronounced bathymetric lineation joining the westernmost South Scotia Ridge to southern South America south of Cape Horn, separating the western Scotia Sea plate from the Antarctic plate. Conventional processing applied to the seismic data outlines the main structures of the Shackleton Fracture Zone, but only the use of enhanced techniques, such as accurate velocity analyses and pre-stack depth migration, provides a good definition of the acoustic basement and the architecture of the sedimentary sequences. In particular, a strong and mostly continuous reflector found at about 8.0 s two-way traveltime is very clear across the entire section and is interpreted as the Moho discontinuity. Data show a complex system of troughs developed along the eastern flank of the crustal ridge, containing tilted and rotated blocks, and the presence of a prominent listric normal fault developed within the oceanic crust. Positive flower structures developed within the oceanic basement indicate strike-slip tectonism and partial reactivation of pre-existing faults. Present-day tectonic activity is found mostly in correspondence to the relief, whereas fault-induced deformation is negligible across the entire trough system. This indicates that the E–W-directed stress regime present in the Drake Passage region is mainly dissipated along a narrow zone within the Shackleton Ridge axis. A reappraisal of all available magnetic anomaly identifications in the western Scotia Sea and in the former Phoenix plate, in conjunction with new magnetic profiles acquired to the east of the Shackleton Fracture Zone off the Tierra del Fuego continental margin, has allowed us to propose a simple reconstruction of Shackleton Fracture Zone development in the general context of the Drake Passage opening.