Puget Sound Zooplankton Monitoring Program (Salish Sea, USA), starting in 2014

The Puget Sound Zooplankton Monitoring Program (PSZMP) is an ongoing collaborative effort involving tribal, county, state, federal, academic, and non-profit organizations working in and around the Salish Sea. The program began in 2014 and is designed to assist efforts in 1) understanding how changes in the local vs oceanic physical environment translate up the food web in Puget Sound, and 2) measuring how the prey field of salmon and other fishes varies spatio-temporally and correlates with fish survival.

Samples are collected at 16 sites across Puget Sound on either a bi-weekly or monthly , depending on the sampling group and season. Vertical tows of a ring net are conducted to capture zooplankton throughout the depth of the water column. Oblique tows of a bongo net are used to sample larger, more motile zooplankton inhabiting the upper 30 m of the water column. After collection, zooplankton are quantitatively subsampled and microscopically counted, with zooplankton densities and biomass computed. All individuals are identified to species or larger taxonomic grouping, and by life stages for some species, within each sample.