Phytoplankton species determination and counts determined from the community sampled at station West and East (PS97) before and after exposure to different Fe and Mn availabilities

Two Fe-Mn bottle amendment experiments with two natural phytoplankton communities were performed during Polarstern expedition PS97 in 2016 in the Drake Passage. At two locations, sea water was pumped (using trace metals clean techniques) from 25m depth and used to fill polycarbonate bottles after having passed through a cleaned 200 μm mesh (removing large grazers). The Control treatment was the sampled seawater without any trace metals addition while the other three treatments were enriched with either FeCl3 alone (0.5 nM; +Fe treatment) or MnCl2 alone (1 nM; +Mn treatment) or both trace metals together (+FeMn treatment). All treatments were done in triplicate 2,5L PC bottles. All incubation bottles were maintained at 30 μmol photons m-2 s-1 under a 16:8 (light:dark) hour cycle at 1 ̊C. To determine the effects of the different treatments on the microplankton composition for the two Fe-Mn enrichment experiments, unfiltered seawater was collected at the start and the end of both experiments for later analysis via light microscopy in the home laboratory. Briefly, samples were fixed with hexamine-buffered formalin solution (2% final concentration) and Lugol's solution (1% final concentration) and stored at 2 °C in the dark until taxonomic analysis. All samples were allowed to settle in Utermöhl sedimentation chambers for at least 24 hours and were analyzed on an inverted light microscope, according to the method of Utermöhl (1958). Species were counted and identified according to taxonomic literature. Each aliquot was examined until at least 400 cells had been counted.