Increasing contributions of prymnesiophytes such as
Phaeocystis pouchetii
and
Emiliania huxleyi
to Barents Sea (BS) phytoplankton production have been suggested based on
in situ
observations of phytoplankton community composition, but the scattered and discontinuous nature of these records confounds simple inference of community change or its relationship to salient environmental variables. However, provided that meaningful assessments of phytoplankton community composition can be inferred based on their optical characteristics, ocean-colour records offer a potential means to develop a synthesis between sporadic
in situ
observations. Existing remote-sensing algorithms to retrieve phytoplankton functional types based on chlorophyll-a (
chl-a
) concentration or indices of pigment packaging may, however, fail to distinguish
Phaeocystis
from other blooms of phytoplankton with high pigment packaging, such as diatoms. We develop a novel algorithm to distinguish major phytoplankton functional types in the BS and apply it to the MODIS-Aqua ocean-colour record, to study changes in the composition of BS phytoplankton blooms in July, between 2002 and 2018, creating time series of the spatial distribution and intensity of coccolithophore, diatom and
Phaeocystis
blooms. We confirm a north-eastward expansion in coccolithophore bloom distribution, identified in previous studies, and suggest an inferred increase in
chl-a
concentrations, reported by previous researchers, may be partly explained by increasing frequencies of
Phaeocystis
blooms.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘The changing Arctic Ocean: consequences for biological communities, biogeochemical processes and ecosystem functioning’.
Bio-optical evidence for increasing
Phaeocystis
dominance in the Barents Sea