Benthic communities as influenced by nuclear testing and radioactive waste disposal off Novaya Zemlya in the Russian Arctic

On the material of sampling, accomplished in: (i) Chernaya Inlet of the Barents Sea (one of the flats of Novaya Zemlya Nuclear Test Site), (ii) in the Open Kara Sea and (iii) on the shoal off Novaya Zemlya from Stepovogo Fjord to Abrosimov Fjord (sites of radioactive waste disposal with activity 90% from total for the Kara Sea), characteristics of macro-, meio- and microbenthic bottom communities on the areas of potential radioactive danger are presented. Significant changes in macro- and meiobenthic communities are not revealed. In Chernaya Inlet, where three nuclear explosions were held in 1955–1961, disturbances in microbenthic protozoa communities are found. These disturbances expressed in the infusoria elimination from the fauna of the inlet deep-water sites and in morphological abnormality of this group individuals in population, inhabiting low depth of the inlet top. The assumed origin of revealed disturbances is high concentration (by 3–4 orders of magnitude above the background) of plutonium in bottom sediments of the inlet. Similar responses of the microbenthic flagellates are not detected.