Origins and paleoceanographic significance of layered diatom ooze from Bransfield Strait in the Northern Antarctic Peninsula around 2.5 kyrs BP

Abstract

We used diatom and porewater data of two piston cores from the central subbasin and one from the western subbasin in the Bransfield Strait in the northern Antarctic Peninsula to elucidate the depositional mechanism of the layered diatom ooze. The layered diatom ooze is characterized by an abundance of organic carbon, biogenic silica, sulfide, sulfur, and lower porewater sulfate concentration. This lack of porewater sulfate concentration in the diatom ooze interval may reflect development of reducing micro-environment in which bacterially mediated sulfate reduction occurred. The negative relationship between the total organic carbon and sulfate contents, however, indicates that sulfate reduction was partly taking place but does not control organic carbon preservation in this unit. Rather, well-preserved Chaetoceros resting spores in the layered diatom ooze indicate a rapid sedimentation of the diatom as a result of repetitive ice-edge blooms on the Bransfield shelf during the cold period (around 2500 yrs BP) when the permanent sea-ice existed on the shelf. During this period, it is expected that the downslope-flowing cold and dense water was also formed on the Bransfield shelf as a result of sea ice formation, playing an important role for the formation of layered diatom ooze in the Bransfield subbasins.