T he Black Sea, earth’s largest anoxic water body, serves as a model system for studies of marine chemistry and biology. The article by Lam et al. (1) in this issue of PNAS describes a new approach to assessing the activity of Black Sea nitrifying bacteria and archaea that are globally important in nitrogen metabolism. The Black Sea was formed after the retreat of the glaciers in the most recen...

Standard NASA ocean color algorithm OC4 was developed on the basis of ocean optical data and while appropriate for Case 1 oceanic waters could not be adequately applied for the Black Sea waters due to its different bio-optical properties. OC4 algorithm is shown to overestimate chlorophyll concentration (Chl-a) in summer and underestimate Chl-a during early spring phytoplankton blooms in the Bla...

Lesser black-backed gulls Larus fuscus are considered to be mainly pelagic. We assessed the importance of different landscape elements (open sea, tidal flats and inland) by comparing marine and terrestrial foraging behaviours in lesser black-backed gulls breeding along the coast of the southern North Sea. We attached GPS data loggers to eight incubating birds and collected information on diet a...

We describe the effect of gelatinous plankton – Aurelia aurita and invaders Mnemiopsis leidyi and Beroe ovata – on fish (eggs, larvae, feeding, and stocks) in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, based on field data and the relevant literature. Representatives of three ecological groups of fish were chosen as examples: planktivorous anchovy typical of warm-water conditions, planktivorous sprat of tem...

The efficiency of different types of traps for catching of the Caspian Sea crayfish, Astacus leptodactylus eichwaldi, was investigated from Mar. 2002 to Feb. 2003. Totally 56 traps of four most commonly used types, "Rectangular trap", "Round trap", "Opera house trap" in two colors of "black" and "blue", and "Fathoms plus" only in black...

Traditionally, Capoeta populations from the southern Caspian Sea basin have been considered as Capoeta capoeta gracilis. Study on the phylogenetic relationship of Capoeta species using mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequences show that Capoeta population from the southern Caspian Sea basin is distinct species and receive well support (posterior probability of 100%). Based on the tree topologie...

During the period 1997-1998, macroalgae, sea snail, mussel, fish and sediment samples were collected at different stations of the Turkish Black Sea coast in order to establish the concentration of selected heavy metals. Heavy metals analyzed were Cd, Co, Cr, Ni, Zn, Fe, Mn, Pb and Cu. The results showed that the Turkish Black Sea coast is facing heavy metal pollution. The metal concentrations i...

The fish species Symphodus bailloni (Valenciennes, 1839) reported in the present study were collected between June 2010 and June 2011 from the western Black Sea coasts which were previously not recorded from the Black Sea coast of Turkey. A total of 717 specimens of S. bailloni were measured, ranging between 8.9 and 15.4 cm TL. Morphometrics, meristics, and diagnostic characteristics of the spe...

Background. DNA adenine methylation plays an important role in several critical bacterial processes including mismatch repair, the timing of DNA replication and the transcriptional control of gene expression. The dependence of bacterial virulence on DNA adenine methyltransferase (Dam) has led to the proposal that selective Dam inhibitors might function as broad spectrum antibiotics. Methodology...

The Baltic and Black Seas are both brackish, that is to say both have salinities intermediate between freshwater and seawater. The coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi is abundant in one, the Black Sea, but absent from the other, the Baltic Sea. Here we present summertime coccolithophore measurements confirming this difference, as well as data on the calcium carbonate saturation state of the Balti...