Zooplankton time series for the Strait of Georgia, 1990–2010

A large fraction of the zooplankton data collected during the past 50 years from the Strait of Georgia has been compiled and archived. The full dataset is very heterogeneous and gappy. This dataset includes deep tows at mid-Strait deep-water locations, where vertical migratory zooplankton can be captured at all times of day and all seasons. Much of the biomass in all seasons consists of large crustaceans (copepods, euphausiids and amphipods with oceanic and subarctic zoogeographic affinities) that undergo strong diurnal or seasonal vertical migrations. Their interannual variability is very strong: about an order of magnitude within most zooplankton categories, and nearly two orders of magnitude for euphausiids, large copepods, and chaetognaths.