Abstract
The sinking of participate organic matter from the euphotic zone is an important pathway for the vertical transport of many elements and organic compounds in the sea1–3. Many natural4–5 and artificial5–7 radionuclides in surface waters are readily adsorbed onto suspended particles and are presumably scavenged and removed to depth on time scales commensurate with both particle sinking rate and retention time of the radionuclide on the particle. Previously, abyssal benthic organisms from the northeast Pacific were found to contain short-lived fission products which entered the sea surface as fallout from nuclear testing8. The presence of these radionuclides at great depth could not be explained by Stokesian settling of small fallout particles and it was hypothesized8 that zooplankton grazing in the surface layers packaged these particle-reactive radionuclides into large, relatively dense faecal pellets which rapidly sank to depth. We report here data from a time-series sediment trap experiment and concomitant zooplankton collections which show conclusively that Chernobyl radioactivity, in particular the rare earth nuclides 141Ce and 144Ce, entering the Mediterranean as a single pulse, was rapidly removed from surface waters and transported to 200m in a few days primarily by zooplankton grazing.
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Fowler, S., Buat-Menard, P., Yokoyama, Y. et al. Rapid removal of Chernobyl fallout from Mediterranean surface waters by biological activity. Nature 329, 56–58 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/329056a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/329056a0
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