Pockmarks and associated fresh submarine groundwater discharge in the seafloor of Puck Bay, southern Baltic Sea.

This is the first well-documented report on the occurrence of pockmarks in Puck Bay. Pockmarks in the seafloor of Puck Bay were discovered during a hydroacoustic survey carried out in 2020. They are located at a depth of 25-27 m in the southwestern part of the bay. Significant depletion of chloride (Cl-) concentrations in sediment pore water was found within the depressions. Most likely, the formation of pockmarks was due to groundwater flow through the Miocene-Pleistocene system of aquifers, which extends from land to the bay area. One-dimensional modeling of vertical Cl- concentration profiles in pore water revealed the upward flow of freshened groundwater within the pockmarks. The magnitude of submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) was estimated to vary from 1.53·10-2 to 18·10-2 L·m-2·h-1. The effect of groundwater seepage was also observed at 3 cm above the seafloor within the pockmarks, which was identified as a decrease in salinity of approximately 0.12 PSU compared to reference sites. Furthermore, due to the effect of water advection, SGD can be detected even several meters above the seafloor as a decrease in salinity values within the thermocline layer.

Anomalous diffraction approximation to the light scattering coefficient spectra of marine particles with power-law size distribution.

Based on anomalous diffraction approximation, analytical expressions for the scattering coefficient of marine particles with power-law size distribution in the infinite domain of sizes (0, ∞) were derived. Comparison with the exact Mie solution for the light scattering by spheres indicated that the obtained expressions can describe the relative spectral variability of the scattering coefficient well. This is demonstrated and discussed for the scattering spectra of main types of marine particulates characterized by different optical properties.