The Balance between Living and Dead Matter 

 in the Oceans 



JOHANNES KREY 



Institut fiir Meereskunde der Universitdt Kiel, Kiel, Germany 



IN discussing the balance between the living and dead matter in 

 the ocean, the problem should be reduced to one of interrelation- 

 ships or, better still, to a web of interrelationships. These ultimately 

 result in a quasi-constant standing crop of plankton organisms. 

 Recently Gushing (1959a, b) and Steele (1959) proposed some 

 reference lines for such a system. In their papers, there is frequent 

 mention of the large gaps in our knowledge of the life processes in 

 the sea and even of the metabolism within the organisms them- 

 selves. Hence, it may seem premature to speak about the balance 

 of matter in the sea. Despite this, I am going to do so in order to 

 stimulate thinking about such matters. 



First, the different actors in the system must be presented. 

 There are at least five of them: phytoplankton, zooplankton, 

 limiting nutrients, light, and the turbulence of the water. A sixth 

 one, "tripton," that is, detritus plus inorganic particulate matter 

 has hitherto been known only by name. 



Phytoplonkfon 



The taxonomy of the phytoplankton, as well as some of its 

 biological, ecological, and physiological factors, is well known. For 

 example, the work of Braarud et al. (1953) in 1948 gives an excel- 

 lent picture of the population over the entire North Sea. Only one 

 other survey is comparable, but it is for a much larger area, the 

 South Atlantic (Hentschel, 1936). Both these investigations of 

 necessity lack one most important component, time. 



Obviously, much good work on the phytoplankton cycle has 



539 



