A research team led by Associate Professor OOKI Atsushi of the Faculty of Fisheries Sciences, Hokkaido University has conducted oceanographic observations to investigate the spatio-temporal distribution of organic iodine gas species in Funka-Bay in Hokkaido and the northern Bering Sea. In Funka-Bay, they found that the concentrations of ethyl iodide (C2H5I) and methyl iodide (CH3I), a type of organic iodine gas, increase on the surface of marine sediments after spring, when phytoplankton blooms occur. High concentrations were also observed on the surface of sediments in the northern Bering Sea and in the shelf areas of the southern Chukchi Sea. Diatoms (a type of phytoplankton) were found to produce these compounds after several days in the dark. It was found that diatoms produced on the ocean surface settled on the seafloor surface and generated ethyl iodide and methyl iodide.
The results of this research were published online in the international journal Communications Earth & Environment on August 12, 2022（
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00513-7）。
