White Paper Proposal

White Paper proposal

A global Continuous Plankton Recorder programme

Philip C. Reid, Marine Institute, University of Plymouth and Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science.

The Continuous Plankton Recorder methodology has proved itself as an efficient and cost effective way of monitoring plankton variability at regular monthly intervals over large areas of oceanic and coastal water. For more than 75 years the North Atlantic CPR survey, now operated by the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS) has monitored plankton variability. The resulting database of over 200,000 samples taken from more than 5 million miles of tow and comprising results for ~500 identified taxa of phytoplankton and zooplankton (half to the level of species) as well as a measure of chlorophyll (Phytoplankton Colour) determined from the colour of the filtering silk, has led to well over 1000 scientific publications. The publications arising from CPR research are increasing at a rapid rate as new ways of utilising the data are being discovered. Other than for measures of sea surface temperature for meteorological services this survey is probably the first truly operational oceanographic programme to be started in the world as it has provided products to governments, industry and the public from the very beginning in 1931. The Narragansett Laboratory of the NMFS in the USA runs two CPR routes off the east coast of the USA (Jossie et al. 1999) to complete a basin-wide coverage in the North Atlantic. In the Northwest Pacific a new CPR survey was started by SAHFOS in 1997 and is now operating two routes, one of which extends between Canada and Japan (Batten 2008). More recently sampling with the CPR was initiated between South Georgia and the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. A sister Southern Ocean survey, now adopted by SCAR, and operated by the Australian Antarctic Survey has been growing since 1991 (Hosie et al. 2003). Finally, a new Australasian CPR survey, which plans to run two routes in the first instance will tow its first CPR machines in 2008 (Davies et al. 2008 GLOBEC Newsletter). Added together these surveys still only cover a very small part of the global ocean. Equivalent information with a wide spatial and long temporal coverage of plankton measurements does not exist and there are very few long-term and globally extensive datasets (Perry et al. 2003).

Phytoplankton comprise ~50% of global primary production and forming the base of the food chain plankton are the sources of food for all other marine organisms. The carrying capacity of ecosystems in terms of the size of fish resources and recruitment to individual stocks is highly dependent on variations in their abundance, timing and composition. These organisms also play a crucial role in climate change through the export of the important greenhouse gas CO2 to the deep ocean by carbon sequestration in what is known as the ‘biological pump’. Without this process concentrations of CO2 would be much higher in the atmosphere and the climate of the world would be considerably warmer. Plankton have also been shown to be sensitive indicators of environmental change, often showing change well before it is detected by physical or chemical observations. Data from the CPR survey has also been intercalibrated with satellite observations of chlorophyll and provides extensive sea truthing for satellite measurements. Given their importance to the global carbon cycle and the Biological pump, as well as to the carrying capacity and recruitment of living marine resources there is an urgent need to improve coverage and understanding of plankton variability on a global scale.

We propose the development of a White Paper to outline a way forward to build a coordinated global Continuous Plankton Recorder programme that utilises common international standards, where possible, of sampling, analysis, data processing and storage. The White Paper would also address the development of outreach and operational products that are of value to governments, researchers, modellers, remote sensors and the public at coastal, regional, oceanic and global scales. The group developing the White Paper would work closely with any parallel plans to develop the ideas presented in the proposal ‘OceanScope’ submitted this year to SCOR and any initiatives that plan to address plankton assessment from remote sensed observations. It is felt that developing a White Paper that focuses on the CPR at a global scale is a sufficiently large and well characterised aim while at the same time cooperating with other observational themes to develop a coordinated whole.

Data from all the CPR sister surveys referred to above have proved to have very wide applications in an operational sense. There has for example been increasing recognition of the uniqueness of the CPR time series as a ‘barometer’ against which climate change and the effects of pollution/eutrophication, on the natural variability of marine populations can be assessed, and also as environmental input to interpretation of changes in fish stocks and fisheries assessments (Brander et al., 2003). The results of the survey have been used to describe and analyse the biogeography, seasonal cycles and year-to-year variability of the plankton in relation to hydro-and meteorological change and fisheries. In a similar ecological vein, other recent applications of CPR data have provided information on harmful algal blooms, monitored and documented the spread of non-indigenous plankton species, and described changes in marine biodiversity and developed new modelling approaches to predict future changes in plankton distribution as a consequence of global warming. An overview of the last 70 years of work by the survey is presented in a special issue of Progress in Oceanography (Reid et al. 2003) and an Atlas of the distribution of a substantial number of species and taxa is published in Marine Ecology Progress Series (Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey Team, 2004). More recent applications of the data and publications are referred to in the Ecological Status Reports that have been published since 2001 (see SAHFOS.org). Equivalent information for the Southern Ocean survey can be seen at:
http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/cpr, for the Narragansett survey at: http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/plankton/data/sahfosatl/index.html and the new Australian survey at: http://imos.org.au/auscpr.html .

Substantial additional information can be derived with CPR results by instrumenting the CPR machines for temperature, salinity and chlorophyll and potentially other determinands. Proposals in this vein should form part of the White Paper.

Potential members who might wish to contribute to the White Paper would include representatives from all the institutional and regional surveys listed above as well as input from groups affiliated with OceanScope.