The Odate Collection is circa 20,000 zooplankton net samples, which were collected in the western North Pacific since the 1940s by various Japanese research institutes, and assembled and curated by the Fisheries Research Agency. Since 2003, we have reanalysed the selected samples of the Odate Colleciton to the species level, and have revealed the changes in community structure, phenology and biogeography of zooplankton, which are closely related to the large scale climatic events such as Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The Odate Collection data sets have also been used for the various international projects aiming for global comparison of long-term ecosystem variations. Meanwhile, despite of scientific contributions of the long-term plankton data sets such as the Odate Collection, and today's increasing demand for the global ocean observation network, many existing monitoring projects have been diminished or even terminated due to limitation of resources. This presentation is to summarise the scientific accomplishments made with the Odate data sets, and I will also discuss the current obstacles and prospect of future sustainability of plankton monitoring efforts.
Bio
Sanae Chiba is a biological oceanographer and Senior Scientist of the Research Institute of Global Change, JAMSTEC, Japan. She received a PhD from the Tokyo University of Fisheries for the study on zooplankton ecology in the Antarctic ocean.
After joining JAMSTEC in 2000, Sanae has been conducting retrospective analysis on the long-term ecosystem change in the western North Pacific using historically collected observational data set, such as the Odate Collection. Her particular focus is interaction among climate, upper ocean environment and lower trophic level ecosystem in interannual to interdecadal time scales.
In 2009, she started participating in the North Pacific Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) Project, which is been operated by Sir Alister Hardy Foundation of Ocean Science (SAHFOS) and endorsed by PICES. Working with the international communities aiming for the basin to global scale comparison on marine ecosystem variation, she is trying to understand regionally specific ecosystem responses to the global environmental changes.