Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T06:02:50.476Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Composition and origin of milky water in the North Sea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2009

J. K. Volkman ,
R. R. Gatten  and
J. R. Sargent
J. K. Volkman
Affiliation:
Organic Geochemistry Unit, Department of Chemistry, University of Bristol
R. R. Gatten
Affiliation:
Natural Environment Research Council, Institute of Marine Biochemistry, Aberdeen, Scotland
J. R. Sargent
Affiliation:
Natural Environment Research Council, Institute of Marine Biochemistry, Aberdeen, Scotland
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

An occurrence of ‘milky water’ which covered a wide area of the North Sea in June 1975 is described. The water contained 20 mg/1 of an oil which was shown by capillary GC-MS to consist mainly (> 80%) of two wax esters 34:1 and 36:1. Analysis of the acids and alcohols released by hydrolysis, and interpretation of the wax ester mass spectra, indicated that the 34:1 ester was almost entirely composed of the alcohol-acid combination 20:1–14:0 and the 36:1 ester was composed of 22:1–14:0 (75%) and 20:1–16:0 (19%). Wax esters of virtually the same composition predominate in the lipids of the copepod Calanus finmarchicus which has the implication that the ‘milky water’ was caused by ageing of the oil released following a mass mortality of copepods. The lack of polyunsaturated wax esters and of astaxanthin is ascribed to oxidative degradation of these labile lipids following release into the sea. A copepod origin for the milky water is further supported by its containing small amounts of cholesterol and pristane, both of which are common to Calanus species.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , August 1980 , pp. 759 - 768
Copyright
Copyright © Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aasen, A. J., Hofstetter, H. H., Iyengar, B. T. R. & Holman, R. T., 1971. Identification and analysis of wax esters by mass spectrometry. Lipids, 6, 502–507.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ackman, R. G., Tocher, C. S. & McLachlan, J., 1968. Marine phytoplankter fatty acids. Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, 25, 1603–1620.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauermeister, A. & Sargent, J. R., 1979. Wax esters: major metabolites in the marine environment. Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 4, 209–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benson, A. A., Lee, R. F. & Nevenzel, J. C, 1972. Wax esters: major marine metabolic energy sources. Biochemical Society Symposia, 35, 175–187.Google Scholar
Bryn, K., Jantzen, E. & Bovre, K., 1977. Occurrence and patterns of waxes in Keisseriaceae. Journal of General Microbiology, 102, 33–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christie, W. W., 1973. Lipid Analysis. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Eglinton, G., Hajibrahim, S. K., Maxwell, J. R., Quirke, J. M. E., Shaw, G. J., Volkman, J. K. & Wardroper, A. M. K., 1979. Lipids of aquatic sediments, recent and ancient. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (A), 293, 69–91.Google Scholar
Fewster, M. E., Burns, B. J. & Mead, J. F., 1969. Quantitative densitometric thin-layer chromatography of lipids using copper acetate reagent. Journal of Chromalography, 43, 120–126.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Folch, J., Lees, M. & Sloane, Stanley G. H., 1957. A simple method for the isolation and purification of total lipids from animal tissues. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 226, 497–509.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gatten, R. R., Corner, E. D. S., Kilvington, C. C. & Sargent, J. R., 1979. A seasonal survey of the lipids in Calanus helgolandicus Claus from the English Channel. In Cyclic Phenomena in Marine Plants and Animals. Proceedings of the 13th European Marine Biology Symposium, Isle of Man, 1978 (ed. E., Naylor and R. G., Hartnoll), pp. 275–284. Oxford: Pergamon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goad, L. J., 1976. The steroids of marine algae and invertebrate animals. In Biochemical and Biophysical Perspectives in Marine Biology, vol. 3 (ed. D. C., Malins and J. R., Sargent), pp. 213–318. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Grøtved, J., 1952. Investigations on the phytoplankton in the southern North Sea in May 1947. Meddelelser fra Danmarks Fiskeri- og Havundersogelser (serie Plankton), 5 (5), 50 pp.Google Scholar
Hardy, A. C., 1956. The Open Sea: Its Xatural History: The World of Plankton. 335 pp. London: Collins.Google Scholar
Lee, R. F. & Nevenzel, J. C., 1979. Wax esters in the marine environment: origin and composition of the wax from Bute Inlet. British Columbia. Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, 36, 1519–1523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, R. F., Nevenzel, J. C. & Lewis, A. G., 1974. Lipid changes during life cycle of marine copepod, Euchaeta japonica Marukawa. Lipids, 9, 891–898.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, R. F., Nevenzel, J. C. & Paffenhöfer, G.-A., 1971. Importance of wax esters and other lipids in the marine food chain: phytoplankton and copepods. Marine Biology, 9, 99–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, R. F. & Williams, P. M., 1974. Copepod ‘slick’ in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. Katurwissenschaften, 61, 505—506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McIntyre, A. & Bé, A. W. H., 1967. Modern Coccolithophoridae of the Atlantic Ocean. I. Placoliths and cyrtoliths. Deep-Sea Research, 14, 561–597.Google Scholar
Sargent, J. R., 1976. Milky water in the North Sea: a rare event? Scottish Fisheries Bulletin, no. 43, 46–48.Google Scholar
Sargent, J. R., Lee, R. F. & Nevenzel, J. C., 1976. Marine waxes. In Chemistry and Biochemistry of Natural Waxes (ed. P. E., Kolattukudy), pp. 50–91. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Sargent, J. R., McIntosh, R., Bauermeister, A. & Blaxter, J. H. S., 1979. Assimilation of the wax esters of marine zooplankton by herring (Clupea harengus) and rainbow trout (Saltno gairdnerii). Marine Biology, 51, 203–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spencer, G. F., 1979. Alkoxy-acyl combinations in the wax esters from winterized sperm whale oil by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Journal of the American Oil Chemists Society, 56, 642–646.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steele, J. H., 1975. The Structure of Marine Ecosystems. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Volkman, J. K., Eglinton, G., Corner, E. D. S. & Sargent, J. R., 1980. Novel unsaturated straight-chain C37-C39 methyl and ethyl ketones in marine sediments and a coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi. In Advances in Organic Geochemistry 1979 (ed. A. G., Douglas and J. R., Maxwell). Oxford: Pergamon Press. (In the Press.)Google Scholar
Wimpenny, R. S., 1966. The Plankton of the Sea. 426 pp. London: Faber and Faber Ltd.Google Scholar