Analytical techniques employed over the past three decades for sugar determination in marine samples are reviewed. This review first summarizes the different hydrolysis protocols used by marine biogeochemists to extract sugars from various marine matrices including sinking particulate organic matter (POM), dissolved organic matter (DOM), ultrafiltrated dissolved organic matter (UDOM), and sediments. The most commonly used methods for total sugar estimation are phenol sulfuric acid (PSA), 3‐methyl‐2‐benzo thiazoline hydrazone hydrochloride (MBTH), and 2,4,6‐tripyridyl‐s‐triazine (TPTZ). For individual sugars, gas chromatographyflame ionization detection (GC‐FID), liquid chromatography‐borate complexes (LC), high performance liquid chromatography‐ethylenediamine derivatives (HPLC‐EDA), high performance liquid chromatography‐p‐aminobenzoic acid derivatives (HPLC‐p‐AMBA), and high performance anion exchange chromatography‐pulsed amperometric detection (HPAEC‐PAD) have been employed, the last method being the most widely used. This study demonstrated that mild and strong hydrolysis give comparable results for open ocean samples, including POM, DOM, and UDOM (except for sediments) using chromatographic or colorimetric techniques. A survey of 130 sugar data sets revealed that more than half of the sugar‐C escapes analysis using chromatographic or colorimetric techniques compared to ¹H and ¹³C NMR techniques. The reconciliation of the NMR and colorimetric or chromatographic measurements is likely to be the key to the understanding of the composition of DOM. This study also demonstrated that most of the published sugar data obtained by chromatographic techniques are related to suspended or sinking POM and sediments, and that there is a need for data on sugar composition in DOM and UDOM, which involve further analytical difficulties for chromatographic analysis.

The Green Edge initiative was developed to investigate the processes controlling the primary productivity and fate of organic matter produced during the Arctic phytoplankton spring bloom (PSB) and to determine its role in the ecosystem. Two field campaigns were conducted in 2015 and 2016 at an ice camp located on landfast sea ice southeast of Qikiqtarjuaq Island in Baffin Bay (67.4797^∘ N, 63.7895^∘ W). During both expeditions, a large suite of physical, chemical and biological variables was measured beneath a consolidated sea-ice cover from the surface to the bottom (at 360 m depth) to better understand the factors driving the PSB. Key variables, such as conservative temperature, absolute salinity, radiance, irradiance, nutrient concentrations, chlorophyll a concentration, bacteria, phytoplankton and zooplankton abundance and taxonomy, and carbon stocks and fluxes were routinely measured at the ice camp. Meteorological and snow-relevant variables were also monitored. Here, we present the results of a joint effort to tidy and standardize the collected datasets, which will facilitate their reuse in other Arctic studies. The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.17882/59892 (Massicotte et al., 2019 a).