Gschwend%20thesis.pdf

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Recently, methods have been developed for the semiquantitative
analysis of volatile organic compounds in aqueous samples (Zlatkis
et aL., 1973; Grob, 1973; Bellar and Lichtenberg, 1974; May et aLi,
1975; Grob and ZUrcher, 1976). Study of this fraction of the
organic matter in seawater has been neglected in the past due to a
lack of suitable methods.
It was the intention of this work to apply gas-phase stripping
and solid-adsorbent trapping methods to the analysis of open-ocean
seawater samples in order to assess the importance of this volatile
organic fraction. Moreover, because the method is based only on
the criterion of "stripability" (see Methods), many diverse organic
compounds containing alkyl -, alkenyl -, aryl -, carbonyl -, alkoxy-,
acyl-, and/or halo-functional groups could be represented and be
used to study the chemistry of compounds containing these moieties
in the environment.
Three markedly different open-ocean regions were investigated:
the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda, the western Equatorial Atlantic, and
the Peru upwelling region. The first two have low primary produc-
tivity while the third is known for its extremely high production.
The western Equatorial Atlantic is influenced by a riverine input
(Amzon) (Ryther et al., 1967). Different atmospheric transport
patterns would be expected for these regions as the Sargasso Sea
receives volatile inputs, including industrial materials, from the
North American continent (Harvey and Steinhauer, 197 6), but the
western Equatorial Atlantic and the region off Peru should show the
effect of dust and organic vapor transport from arid land.s (Zuta et
aL., 1975; Simoneit et al.,. 1977). The Peru upwelling region is
oxygen deficient in midwater and is underlain by anoxic sediments.