Award: OCE-1154661

The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) Survey operates out of the United Kingdom, and has monitored plankton across the North Atlantic since 1931. A CPR is a device towed behind ships such as passenger ferries, tankers, and cargo ships, as they ply their regular routes each month. The CPR collects plankton as it traverses the oceans, offering a highly cost-effective method for studying this important part of the marine ecosystem. Plankton are plants and animals that drift with the oceans? currents forming the very base of the food web; the majority of life in the sea is dependent on them, from tiny fish up to whales, as well as humans. Many fish and shellfish that we enjoy eating either spend a proportion of their life as plankton, or actively depend on the plankton for food. The CPR Survey has collected data from over 6.6 million miles of towing in the oceans, amassing over a quarter of a million samples. These samples contain both phytoplankton (plant-like organisms) and zooplankton (animal), with over 800 types being recorded from the Arctic to the Antarctic. The long time series of the Survey provides a baseline against which environmental and potentially human impacts in the oceans can be assessed. The USA, through NSF and via WHOI, has maintained support for the CPR Survey in the NW Atlantic continuously since the establishment of the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS), the non-profit organisation responsible for the Survey, in 1990. This contribution by the USA to the international funding consortium for the Survey helps ensure the survival and development of the Survey in the NW Atlantic. Currently funding by NSF ensures the only truly basin scale marine biological survey in the world is maintained in the North Atlantic. Data collected by the Survey are available for both internal and external scientists to use, and are available by contacting SAHFOS (www.sahfos.ac.uk). The Survey has a strong reputation of outreach, engaging with not only research scientists (many of which are from the US, and collaborations have resulted in work in the most highly respected science journals), but also schoolchildren, students, governmental bodies and agencies as well private companies. Due to the importance of plankton in the marine food web, data on their abundance throughout not only the year, but over a long period of time, can provide important information to those investigating fish stocks and fishing pressures, climate change, and pollution impacts. The ongoing support of NSF funding has allowed such data to be used in research publications, internationally important climate change studies (i.e., IPCC), and has helped inform governmental policies on an international scale. Last Modified: 05/10/2017 Submitted by: Peter H Wiebe