Decomposition of Organic Matter in Sea Water by Bacteria: I. Bacterial Multiplication in Stored Sea Water.

The organic matter in the sea is unevenly distributed between the living plant and animal population, the suspended detritus, the organic matter in the sea bottom, and that present in the water in true and in colloidal solution. The living forms and the detritus make up only a small part of the total organic matter in the sea; the ratio between the organic matter in solution and that present in the total plankton was found to range from 7: 1 (Gran and Ruud, 1926) to 300:1 (Krogh, 1934a). The chemical nature of the organic matter in the marine bottom material was shown (Boysen-Jensen, 1914; Waksman, 1933) to be similar to that of humus in land soils, both in chemical composition and resistance to decomposition. However, the origin, chemical nature and transformation of the organic matter dissolved in the water are still open to question. According to Putter (1907, 1924), algae give off into the water, in the process of their nutrition, large quantities of carbohydrates; it was suggested that this may possibly be a result of changes brought about by the bacteria adhering to the algae. Petersen (1911) was of the opinion that the dissolved organic matter does not come from plankton algae but from benthos formations. Putter's ideas (1909) concerning the r6le of the dissolved organic matter in the nutrition of marine animals also met with considerable criticism.