Chlorophyll a measurements by HPLC from the Belgian Part of the North Sea

In the framework of the Lifewatch marine observatory a number of fixed stations in the Belgian Part of the North Sea (BPNS) are visited on a monthly or seasonal basis using RV Simon Stevin. A grid of nine stations covers the coastal zone and are sampled monthly. Eight additional stations, located further at sea, are sampled on a seasonal basis. Since 2012, samples are taken by filtering seawater collected from Niskin bottles closed at 3m below the sea surface on a Whatman GF/F glass fiber filters using a vacuum pump and tracking the volume filtered. High Pressure Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) is used for the determination of pigments using three slightly different protocols Zapata et al. (2000), Van Heukelem & Thomas (2001), Wright & Jeffrey (2006). Full dataset is described in Mortelmans et al., 2019 ( https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41597-019-0032-7).