The ICES strategic plan recognised the ICES role in making scientific information accessible to the public in addition to the fisheries and environmental assessment groups. Thus, during the 1999 Annual Science Conference a general request was made from ICES to the Oceanography Committee Working Groups to develop data products and summaries that could be provided on a routine basis to the ICES community via the ICES web site. The Working Group on Zooplankton Ecology (WGZE) consider as a priority action to produce a summary report on zooplankton activities in the ICES area based on the time series obtained in the national monitoring programmes.

The purpose of producing such report is to give a global (ICES scale) and visual overview of zooplankton distributions for the preceding years (in the form of time series) with a brief interpretation of the ecological significance of these results. Reported results are supported by significant observations and trends based on time series sampling programmes from ongoing monitoring sites in the ICES region. Most of the graphs and data from different regions are presented here in the same format and data units were expressed as dry weight or in numbers per m2 ; so comparisons between regions can easily be made.

Temperature can have a large influence on the community structure and production of zooplankton and can cause large seasonal, yearly and decadal changes in zooplankton population size. It was for this reason that data sets are presented here by affinities in temperature and biogeographical areas.

Status Reports (Acrobat PDF format)

1999-2000
2000-2001
2001-2002
2003-2004
2004-2005
2006-2007

WGZE time series map

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