Going Global: Internationalising the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey

Plankton are the 'life blood' of the oceans where they carry out key ecological services. These include forming the main food stock of most fisheries, the ability to control our climate and the generation of half the oxygen we breathe.

Plankton are tiny organisms, generally microscopic in size and are difficult to sample. In 1931 Sir Alister Hardy set up the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) Survey to help fishermanin the North Sea. The recorder is towed by merchant navy vessels on regular routes collecting plankton that are then analysed in the laboratory. Because of the demand for plankton data, the CPR Survey has grown and now operates at monthly frequency on standard tow routes in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and Arctic Oceans. In these oceans plankton are changing their abundance and distribution influenced by global change processes. For instance in the North Atalntic plankton have moved 1000 km northwards in 5 decades. This is due to large scale processes such as pollution, ocean acidification and climate change. The CPR SUrvey is managed by the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth UK.

In the last 15 years, independent Surveys have been set up in Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and China. South Africa, Namibia and Brazil wish to set up their own surveys. In each case the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science has helped these countries to set up their own surveys.

This proposal is to create a Global Alliance for CPR Surveys (GACS) so that a global perspective can be achieved. GACS will be 'more than the sum of the individual parts' since we will move from a series of disconnected surveys towards a global perspective. This is needed to tackle the global challenges of climate, fisheries, pollution, and ocean acidification. The funding requested is to 'pump prime this process to enable the surveys to work together. A global database will be set up as will a website and newsletter. Training progarmmes involving secondment of staff will be set up. It is anticipated that GACS will be self sustaining once it is set and the way of working has been agreed.

The Global Alliance of CPR Surveys will be modelled on the SAHFOS based CPR Survey which produces data on plankton biodiversity as a service to the community.

The community of users is very wide and includes scientists and policy makers. The scientific community in question is far wider that those who carry out the immediate or even similar work in plankton. It ranges from marine modellers who need high quality data to verify ecosystem models to terrestrial scientists who are interested in whether the seas and land are behaving similarly to global change. A wide range of policy makers use our products already. These include Defra, Environment Agency (EA), European Environment Agency (EEA), Fisheries Research Services Scotland (FRS), Healthy Biologically Diversity Seas Evidence Group (HBDSEG), Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP). Requests from stakeholders for CPR data products have risen steadily from 2 in 1999 to 53 in 2009.

With the formation of GACS this net of stakeholders will increase several fold simply because the data sets will be considerably larger (global rather than regional) and the range of applications can be increased. Thus we anticipate there will be take up by the global community of ocean scientists, ecologists, biogeochemists, earth system modellers. GACS will also be of interest to international policy makers and coordination committees including Canadian Department of Fisheries and Ocean (DFO) who require details on plankton that underpin fisheries; Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) that seek international cooperation for sustained observations of the oceans, generation of oceanographic products and services and interaction between research, operational, and user communities; Group on Earth Observations (GEO) who have ecosystems and biodiversity as Societal Benefit Areas (SBA's); GEO Biodiversity Observation Network (GEOBON) that require information on all major biodiversity resources; Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC*) that promotes international cooperation in marine research including observation systems and capacity development in order to learn more and better manage the nature and resources of the oceans; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who require an understanding of how plankton change in relation to climate change; International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) who require understanding of plankton as they underpin fisheries sustainability; Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR*) that require plankton data to underpin their core programmes; US National Ocean and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA*) requires plankton data in order to manage fisheries in US waters; World Health Organisation (WHO) since some diseases (cholera) are considered to be borne by plankton.

GACS will interact with all policy makers and coordination committees via email to announce GACS has been set up and also via the new website. Some organisations* have already indicated they wish to join the first workshop to oversee the formation of GACS and to input views on its relevance for stakeholders.

GACS will greatly increase the efficiency of public service through the provision of global data that is quality controlled and readily available via a 'one stop shop'.

GACS will also underpin enhanced quality of life by the provision of data on plankton that are a major component in climate control, fisheries and ocean acidification.

All these aspects will have an indirect but fundamental impact on UK plc.