Zooplankton Abundance and Life Stage Data from the Delaware Bay, 1976-1977

From November 3, 1976, to November 18, 1977, this dataset contains zooplankton observations from net casts in the Delaware Bay and North Atlantic Ocean. Data were collected by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science for the Ocean Continental Shelf project and processed into the NODC F124 standard format. The records likely contain species-level counts, life history stages, and associated environmental measurements.

Use Cases

• Analyzing seasonal changes in zooplankton abundance based on time-stamped sampling events.
• Studying species distribution and community composition across the Delaware Bay and North Atlantic.
• Correlating zooplankton counts with environmental variables like sampling depth, temperature, and salinity.
• Investigating life history stage distributions (e.g., adults, juveniles, larvae) within plankton populations.
• Assessing meroplankton and ichthyoplankton density estimates for ecosystem productivity models.

Strengths

• Data covers a specific, well-documented one-year time range from 1976-11-03 to 1977-11-18.
• Processed to a standardized, documented format (NODC F124), suggesting consistent structure.
• Presence on multiple government platforms (Data.gov, NASA Earthdata) indicates curation and archival importance.

Limitations

• Key metadata is missing: no column names, row counts, file size, or license information are provided.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates (1977 vs. 2026) create uncertainty about the provenance of the listed metadata.
• Documentation is referenced via an external link, which may be broken or outdated.

Provenance

Source

Virginia Institute of Marine Science - Gloucester Point

Collection Method

Collected using zooplankton net casts and other instruments, processed by NODC to the F124 format.

Time Range

1976-11-03 to 1977-11-18

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:31:23.897303

Geography

Delaware Bay and North Atlantic Ocean