Continuous plankton monitoring in southern Brazilian waters: composition and distribution of plankton in the fishing area of Brazilian Bight

The partnership award will be used in networking activities to support the continuation and success of the newly implemented Brazilian plankton surveys. The aim is to develop a sustainable collaboration between SAHFOS and the surveys operating from UNIVALI and FURG, and also to encourage cooperation between the two survey organisations within Brazil.

Due to the longevity of the CPR survey and its wide spatial coverage, SAHFOS is able to make inter-annual and decadal observations of changes in plankton biodiversity and abundance in the North Atlantic. Over the last decade and with the addition of the GACS community, CPR coverage and observations of this kind have expanded into the North Pacific, Southern Ocean, South East Atlantic, and Australasia. With input from these sister surveys SAHFOS has been responsible for producing the first ever global marine ecological status report. There are however significant gaps in the global coverage of routine plankton sampling and a Brazilian survey operating in the South West Atlantic would fill one of these significant gaps, allowing for a more complete picture of the plankton dynamics in the Atlantic to be built.

At present Brazil is limited in its ability to describe trends or changes in its nertitic and oceanic planktonic communities, due to its reliance on isolated sampling events using costly scientific research vessels. Continuous plankton monitoring, using a CPR and the recently developed VOC, towed by means of SOOPs; however, will give a new spatially diverse perspective with minimal cost implications. The proposed survey transects will collect samples from important marine regions, including productive fishing grounds, not previously studied