Task Order No' I7 Historical Plankton Data Rescue

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Task Order No. I-7Historical Plankton Data
Rescue

• Todd OBrien
• Marine Ecosystems Division
• NMFS-HQ

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Scientific Rationale

• Why are plankton data important?
• In recent years, we have seen dramatic changes in
  the North Atlantic and North Pacific ecosystems,
  most visible in the bird and fish populations,
  but also in the plankton populations.
• Plankton are a direct link between primary
  producers and upper trophic levels. They provide
  a unique tool to study the effects climate change
  on ecosystems, as they are a key source of food
  to fish but are not directly affected by fishing
  pressure. Plankton production timing (e.g., the
  spring bloom) and distribution are dependent on
  temperature, and therefore impacted by climate
  variability.
• To better understand these recent dramatic
  observations, historical observations are needed.
  Unfortunately, historical data are often in
  non-digital form, inaccessible, and sometimes
  forgotten in institutional archives and libraries.

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Review of FY 2006 Process

• The Task Leader
• identified candidate plankton data in the CDMP
  Web Search Store Retrieve Display (WSSRD) image
  database, searched institutional archives and
  libraries, and directly contacted investigators
  and institutions for candidate data
• prepared keying instructions and sent data to the
  contractor.
• The Contractor
• prepared a keying template for the data, returned
  it to the Task Leader for approval, and key
  entered the data.
• The Task Leader
• quality reviewed the returned data, loaded them
  into the NMFS-COPEPOD database, and placed them
  online (www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/plankton) within 1-2
  months of keying.

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FY 2006 Project Accomplishments

• CDMP I-7 rescued the data content of over 7,256
  plankton tows
• collected during 125 cruises aboard 45 different
  research vessels
• containing over 59,000 individual observations
  (measurements)
• and 2006 work will
  continue until February.

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FY 2006 Project Accomplishments (2)

• COPEPOD database is released every 2 years as a
  NMFS TM, with an accompanying online, interactive
  atlas of plankton distribution and biomass
  concentration fields.
• All data from I-7 will be included in the
  upcoming COPEPOD-2007, while data from previous
  CDMP work is already featured in COPEPOD-2005.

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FY 2007 Continuation Plans

• In addition to continuing the processing of
  existing WSSRD documents, high priority data
  sources from the northwest Atlantic, Pacific,
  Antarctic, Mediterranean, and South Atlantic
  Oceans have been identified.
• One high priority focus for ongoing FY07 work
  will be data from the Bureau of Commercial
  Fisheries, a predecessor of NMFS. In the Pacific
  Ocean, these new data would supplement the
  temporal and spatial coverage of data from the
  50 year CalCOFI time series as well as other
  tropical Pacific data.
• How much more needs to be done on this project
  (assuming support at FY06 levels)?
• If the Task Leader stopped looking for new data
  today, the remaining 60 WSSRD image documents,
  and the spin-off references in those documents,
  would take at least another year to complete.

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