ICES Zooplankton Status Report 2008/2009

Environmental time-series data are essential form observing changes in marine ecosystems over seasonal, interannual, and longer time frames. These changes may be continuous or they may occur as sudden shifts, requiring longer timeseries for better detection of trends and statistical comparison. Every year of data added to a timeseries makes the entire dataset more valuable than it was the year before. As more years are added to a time-series, the subset of questions that can be answered grows, and exciting new questions and discoveries often develop. Yet a majority of the funding vehicles available for this kind of research make it extremely difficult to fund sampling for more than three to five years from a given grant or funding source. For this reason, any long-running time-series is a true sign of the commitment of the scientists and institutions involved in keeping suan ongoing programme funded and staffed. With zooplankton time-series, the level of effort required is even greater because, unlike an automated buoy or conductivity–temperature–depth (CTD) cast, the datapoints often represent hours of laboratory and microscope work.