ICES Zooplankton Status Report 2006/2007

In its strategic plan, ICES recognized its role in making scientific information accessible to the public as well as to fisheries and environmental assessment groups. During the 1999 Annual Science Conference, ICES requested the Oceanography Committee working groups to develop data products and summaries that could be routinely provided to the ICES community via the ICES website. The Working Group on Zooplankton Ecology (WGZE) has given priority to producing a summary report on zooplankton activities in the ICES Area based on the time-series obtained from national monitoring programmes. This is the seventh summary of zooplankton monitoring in the ICES Area and expands on previous reports with improved analysis, data, and presentation. This year’s report includes eight new monitoring sites: five from the western North Atlantic, two from the northern Baltic, and one from the northern Skagerrak. For each of the 37 zooplankton monitoring sites (Figure 1), WGZE has continued to seek out and include co-sampled temperature and chlorophyll data, as well as any available phytoplankton and nutrient data.