Bermuda Atlantic Time-Series Study (BATS) Zooplankton Census

This study of plankton diversity at the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study
(BATS) site is part of an initiative to create an online atlas of marine
diversity, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), a database of
global marine animal and plant distributions. Planktonic communities comprise
a wide diversity of organisms that form the basis of marine food webs. The
zooplankton and micronekton provide a direct link between primary producers and
higher trophic levels such as fishes, seabirds, and some marine mammals.
Zooplankton contain representatives of nearly every animal group. There are two
important reasons for a census of the diversity and abundance of the plankton.
The first is the need to describe and understand patterns of distribution and
abundance of organisms and to predict the impact of environmental change on
those patterns. Second, to better understand their qualitative and quantitative
role in the pelagic food web and the cycling of elements in the sea. We are
developing a multi-species inventory of zooplankton and micronekton at the
Bermuda Atlantic Time-Series Study (BATS) station, a 13-year, ongoing
oceanographic time series situated in the western North Atlantic subtropical
gyre, or Sargasso Sea. The program will provide high-resolution species data
that covers diel seasonal, annual, and decadal time scales. Detailed
accompanying environmental & metadata & data already available from BATS
cruises (e.g., water column temperature, oxygen, nutrients, and plant pigment
concentration) will be merged with the species data set. A critical research
objective is to provide data on species distribution and abundance to OBIS and
to serve as a starting place in which data collected in the future can be
placed.

The purpose of the data is to provide species lists, and counts of different
groups of zooplankton.

[Information was obtained from http://web.vims.edu/bio/zooplankton/BATS/]