Carbon and the Antarctic Marine Food Web: A response to comment by C. L. Moloney

M. E. Huntley¹, M. D. G. Lopez¹ and D. M. Karl²

¹Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093

²School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822

Introduction

M. Huntley et al. present a model of an Antarctic marine food web and suggest that top predators in the Southern Ocean are responsible for a large efflux of carbon into the atmosphere, up to 20 to 25% of primary production. These values are probably an order of magnitude too large because Huntley et al. have used an oversimplified food web and invalid assumptions and parameter values.