Marine

New phytoplankton and microbe report launched

October 23, 2012 by sfraser No Comments | Category Marine Directorate Science

The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) has launched its first phytoplankton and microbial plankton status report. This report presents data from sixty one sites and from seven geographic regions within the North Atlantic, Baltic and Mediterranean areas. It also includes forty standard areas from the continuous plankton recorder monitoring programme operated by Plymouth Marine Laboratory (http://www.sahfos.ac.uk/).

Phytoplankton data from six coastal ecosystem monitoring sites operated by Marine Scotland Science are presented. Some similar patterns of change in the phytoplankton community have been observed at these sites most of which have been in operation for the last 10 years. For example, since 2005 the abundance of the spring bloom diatom Skeletonema has increased around the Scottish coast. In contrast, the abundance of the summer dinoflagellate Ceratium has decreased over the last 10 years.

The report is free to download and can be accessed here (http://www.ices.dk/pubs/crr/crr313/ICES%20313%20-WEB.pdf).

Ceratium furca

Skeletonema spp

Tags: continuous plankton recorder, ICES, phytoplankton

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