Quantitative species distribution and primary productivity of phytoplankton were studied monthly from August, 1987 to July, 1988 along with the quantitative distribution of total heterotrophic bacterioplankton and three groups of physiologically chrac...
Quantitative species distribution and primary productivity of phytoplankton were studied monthly from August, 1987 to July, 1988 along with the quantitative distribution of total heterotrophic bacterioplankton and three groups of physiologically chracteristic bacterioplankton in the intertidal and subtidal waters off Kum River Estuary, Yellow Sea. A total of 121 phytoplankton taxa including 102 diatoms occurred, and cell concentration ranged from 15 to 5451 (cells/ml). The great spatio-temporal variations of the number of phytoplankton species and cell concentration well reflected the environmental differences between the intertidal and subtidal waters. Primary productivity (in Piopt, mgC/$m^3$/hr) ranged from 0.6 to 27.3. Just after the phytoplankton bloom (March) Piopt was very low in April at station 1, where amylolytic bacterioplankton also showed quite low population density. The peaks of primary productivity were not always coincided with those of phytoplankton standing crop. The ratio of Piopt's between samples well indicated the environmental differences between the intertidal and subtidal waters. Little characteristic trend was found in the scatter diagrams of phytoplankton standing crop along the population densities of total heterotrophic bacterioplankton and the three groups of physiologically characteristic bacterioplankton. In summer the phytoplankton standing crop was minimum in contrast with the high population density of bacterioplankton, which implies the influx of much allochthonous orgainc matter from Kum River. The scatter diagrams of Piopt along bacterioplankton population density revealed some phenomena there. Piopt had highly positive correlation with the population density of amylolytie bacterioplankton($R^2$=0.84) and that of lipolytic bacterioplankton($R^2$=0.70) while total heterotrophic bacterioplankton and proteolytic bacterioplankton had lesser correlations with Piopt. From the regression lines the increase of unit Piopt (mgC/$m^3$/hr) in the study area was calculated to mean the increase of $9.0{\times}10$ cells/ml and $8.0{\times}10$ cells/ml of amylolytic bacterioplankton and lipolytic bacterioplankton, respectively.