Phytoplankton Monitoring

From 2008 - 2011 we sampled phytoplankton at the GCRL pier 1-4x per month. Cells were collected with a 10 micrometer mesh phytoplankton net. A subsample was placed on a gridded microscope slide, and all cells visible at 100x magnification were counted. Identifications were made using the NOAA Phytoplankton Monitoring Network (PMN) protocols. Data from each sample were uploaded to the online PMN database that can be accessed here: http://chbr.noaa.gov/pmn/

Key findings over the study were that diatoms dominated the phytoplankton community, and a small but consistent fraction was the dinoflagellates. Blooms were infrequent, but typically composed of dinoflagellates in the Ceratium genus. There is a suspicious, but difficult to verify, decline in the phytoplankton during the 2010 oil spill (May-Sept). Recovery to pre-spill population abundances was evident in the 2011 samples.

Pictures of phytoplankton cells observed in our sampling can be seen here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/drcgrass/PhytoplanktonMonitoring#