The primary objective of the planktonic communities program is to describe spatial, seasonal and interannual characteristics of the plankton (phytoplankton and zooplankton) communities within the study areas.

Phytoplankton, along with algae that grow attached to sea ice, are the conduit of the sun's energy into organic "food" at the base of the food chain in the Chukchi Sea. Phytoplankton are assessed as chlorophyll-a concentration from water samples collected with a Conductivity, Temperature, Depth (CTD) rosette. We also measure the concentration of the major nutrients required for their growth in these samples. Zooplankton are the major consumers of phytoplankton, and hence the key pathway to vertebrates such as pelagic fish, seabirds, and even bowhead whales. Zooplankton are collected using two different methods: paired ring nets of medium-size mesh hauled vertically at slow speed for smaller species, and Bongo nets towed off the side of a ship moving at 2 knots for larger, faster species. This dataset is part of the Pacific Marine Arctic Regional Synthesis (PacMARS) Project.

This dataset contains the original CSV files, metadata files, shapefiles, and geodatabase files in ZIP files.