AusCPR: Phytoplankton Abundance in Australian Waters

The Australian Continuous Plankton Recorder survey provides in-situ phytoplankton abundance data to establish a long-term baseline for ocean health. It is a joint project of CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere and the Australian Antarctic Division, funded by the Integrated Marine Observing System. The data supports mapping biodiversity, detecting algal blooms, and validating satellite remote sensing.

Use Cases

• Mapping plankton biodiversity and distribution across Australian regional seas.
• Documenting plankton community changes in response to climate change.
• Providing biological indices for fisheries management and stock assessment.
• Detecting and monitoring harmful algal blooms for environmental protection.
• Validating satellite remote sensing data for ocean color and productivity.

Strengths

• Data collection follows a standardized, peer-reviewed methodology (Richardson et al. 2006).
• Project is a long-term baseline survey with institutional support from CSIRO and AAD.
• Data is planned to be interoperable with other national and international programs via IMOS.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, specific columns, file size, and license are not provided in the available sources.
• The 'last updated' date is inconsistently reported (2026-03-21 and 2026-04-28), suggesting potential metadata freshness issues.
• The specific temporal coverage (start year, time range) of the data series is not stated.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN) portal, sourced from the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) Ships of Opportunity facility.

Collection Method

In-situ sampling using Continuous Plankton Recorders (CPR), with phytoplankton counted directly on the sampling mesh.

Freshness

Last updated dates are reported as 2026-03-21 and 2026-04-28, but these are future dates which may indicate a metadata error.

Geography

Australian waters, including the Tasman Sea, Coral Sea, Great Australian Bight, Bass Strait, and surrounding Indian, Pacific, and Southern Oceans.