“…Picoplankton contribution was unlikely to have had any major importance during the sampling periods, as these very small forms are generally not a relevant component within the Southern Ocean (Scott and Marchant, 2005), although within the oligotrophic Pacific Antarctic sector this fraction was estimated as 7-33% of the total phytoplankton biomass (Wright et al, 2009). In our work, a pronounced relative contribution of cryptophytes was primarily associated with lower Chl-a (b 1 mg m − 3 ), contrasting other studies that have reported a high abundance of cryptophytes in association with higher Chl-a (N 1 mg m − 3 ) at other sites across the BS or in adjacent regions (Mendes et al, 2013;Moline and Prézelin, 1996;Moline et al, 2004;Rodriguez et al, 2002). Moreover, there were noteworthy differences in phytoplankton composition between firstly ; gray bars), temperature (SST, in°C; dash-dot-dash line) and AMSR-E sea ice area (10 2 km 2 ; dotted line), calculated as the synoptic mean in the white box shown in Fig.…”