Under-ice fauna biomass, carbon demand, and secondary production under Arctic pack ice north of Svalbard during the Polarstern expedition PS92 in spring 2015

We investigated the biomass, carbon demand, and secondary production of under-ice fauna (here metazoans >300 μm) at eight stations in the Arctic Ocean, north of Svalbard. Sampling was conducted during spring in 2015 with the Surface and Under Ice Trawl (SUIT). The biomass (µgCm-²) for under-ice fauna taxa was calculated by multiplying abundances (ind. m-²) of each taxon obtained from Ehrlich et al. (2020) by the carbon content per individual of this taxon. The mass-specific ingestion rate of each taxon was multiplied by the total biomass of that taxon at every station to determine the carbon demand per day (µgC/m²/day). The secondary production of under-ice fauna was calculated by using a P/B ratio from Forest et al. (2014) for large Arctic mesozooplankton species.