Marine biological hotspots along the continental slopes between Greenland and Canada

Marine ecosystems and their living resources are of vital economical and societal importance to Greenland. Offshore waters along the continental slopes support important fisheries, due to their oceanographic conditions sustaining high biological production. While animals such as shrimps, fishes, and mammals are well studied and surveyed in this offshore region, due to their commercial importance, relatively few studies exist on the seasonal and spatial dynamics of phyto-, zoo- and ichthyoplankton, despite their crucial role in sustaining the marine food web. Phytoplankton biomass and production are often underestimated, due to a lack of in situ data, necessitating a reliance on remote sensing estimates with limited depth resolution. This knowledge gap is limiting our understanding of the production capacity of these important offshore ecosystems. We present a large plankton dataset from offshore waters between Greenland and Canada along with commercial fishing activity. We found remarkably high phytoplankton biomass throughout the productive season from spring to autumn, solidifying the growing consensus that continental slopes are important biological hotspots.