Planktonic Production Cycles and their Relationship with Fishing Resources on the Portuguese Coast

The “Ciclos de Produção Planctónica e a sua Relação com os Recursos Pesqueiros” project aimed to describe the dynamics of planktonic communities associated with the coastal upwelling system in Portugal.
The dataset refers to the sampling carried out between 21 August and 3 September 1985, 23 November and 2 December 1985 and, 20 March and 4 April 1986 with the RV \"Noruega\". The zooplankton sampling was carried out at 104 stations in an area off Portugal coast, defined by the 20 and 1000-meter isobathymetrics. The collection of zooplanktonic was carried out using a FAO net - 90 cm in diameter and 505 μm in mesh opening - in double oblique trawls, from the surface to a maximum depth of 200 m. In stations with depths of less than 200 m, sampling was carried out from circa 5 meters of the bottom to the surface. The volume of filtered water was determined using a previously calibrated flow meter located within the mouth of the net. The speed of the trawls was about 50 m per min., with the total drag time being measured and the cable angles recorded every 10 meters during the ascent of the net.
This report is a repository of the identification and enumeration data of zooplankton samples. It is intended to contribute to the establishment of a zooplankton database for the Portuguese coast and make it accessible to interested users. In this sense, data processing is minimal, with care taken to control the quality of the data and to standardise the units in which the values are expressed.