Dataset: Northeast US Ichthyoplankton

Name: Abundance and proportion of ichthyoplankton of the Northeast U.S. Shelf from surveys conducted during the MARMAP (1977-1987) and EcoMon (1999-2008) programs.
Published: 2015-06-16
Keywords: biota, oceans

Cite This Dataset

DOI:10.1575/1912/bco-dmo.560448.1

Spatial Extent: N:44.26110273 E:-65.91371179 S:35.87810748 W:-75.69231598

Temporal Extent: 1977-01-01 - 2008-12-31

Project:

Northeast Fisheries Science Center Ichthyoplankton Collection (NEFSC Ichthyoplankton)

Program:

National Marine Fisheries Service / Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NMFS/NEFSC)

Principal Investigator:

Jonathan Hare (Northeast Fisheries Science Center - Narragansett, NOAA NEFSC)

Contact:

Harvey Walsh (Northeast Fisheries Science Center - Narragansett, NOAA NEFSC)

BCO-DMO Data Manager:

Shannon Rauch (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, WHOI BCO-DMO)

Version:

Version Date:

2015-06-16

Restricted:

Validated:

Yes

Current State:

Final no updates expected

Abundance and proportion of ichthyoplankton of the Northeast U.S. Shelf from surveys conducted during the MARMAP (1977-1987) and EcoMon (1999-2008) programs.

Abstract:

Abundance and proportion of ichthyoplankton of the Northeast U.S. Shelf. Ichthyoplankton data from several surveys conducted during the Marine Resources Monitoring, Assessment, and Prediction (MARMAP; 1977-1987) and Ecosystem Monitoring (EcoMon; 1999-2008) programs. The Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) has conducted several ichthyoplankton collection programs on the NEUS Shelf over the past forty years including the Marine Resources Monitoring, Assessment, and Prediction program (MARMAP, 1977 - 1987) and Ecosystem Monitoring (EcoMon, 1999 - present) program (Richardson et al. 2010). Both MARMAP and EcoMon were designed as multi-species plankton surveys, and sampling effort covered the entire NEUS Shelf from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to Cape Sable, Nova Scotia (Figure 1, Sibunka and Silverman 1984, 1989; Richardson et al. 2010).

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Archival Copy

Version Date	Archive	Persistent Identifier (PID)	Date PID Issued
2015-06-16	Marine Biological Laboratory/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Library (MBLWHOI DLA)	10.1575/1912/bco-dmo.560448.1	2020-01-14

Description

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) has conducted several ichthyoplankton collection programs on the NEUS Shelf over the past forty years including the Marine Resources Monitoring, Assessment, and Prediction program (MARMAP, 1977 - 1987) and Ecosystem Monitoring (EcoMon, 1999 - present) program (Richardson et al. 2010). Both MARMAP and EcoMon were designed as multi-species plankton surveys, and sampling effort covered the entire NEUS Shelf from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to Cape Sable, Nova Scotia (Figure 1, Sibunka and Silverman 1984, 1989; Richardson et al. 2010).

References:
Richardson DE, Hare JA, Overholtz WJ, Johnson DL. 2010. Development of long-term larval indices for Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) on the northeast US continental shelf. Ices Journal of Marine Science. 67(4):617-27. doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsp276

Sibunka JD, Silverman MJ. 1984. MARMAP surveys of the continental shelf from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to Cape Sable, Nova Scotia (1977-1983). Atlas No. 1. Summary of operations. US Department of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memo. NMFS-F/NEC-33:306 p.

Sibunka JD, Silverman MJ. 1989. MARMAP surveys of the continental shelf from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to Cape Sable, Nova Scotia (1984-87). Atlas No. 3. Summary of operations. US Department of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memo. NEFC-F/NEC-68:197 p.

Methods & Sampling

MARMAP used mainly a fixed station design covering the sample area of each survey approximately evenly (Sibunka and Silverman 1984, 1989). EcoMon sampled the same spatial extent of the shelf as MARMAP, but used a random-stratified design based on the NEFSC bottom trawl survey design (Azarovitz 1981). The number of plankton strata (n = 47) is lower than the bottom trawl survey (n = 108) as the narrow inshore stratum and the offshore shelf-break stratum of the bottom trawl survey (Azarovitz 1981) are combined in the EcoMon plankton sampling design. The area encompassed by each stratum determined the number of samples in that stratum. The number of stations sampled during an EcoMon survey is approximately 30 % less than that of MARMAP. Samples were collected four to eight times per year (primarily: January-February, March-April, May-June, July-August, September-October, and November-December) for each program (Richardson et al. 2010).

The basic station protocols were very similar for MARMAP and EcoMon (Jossi and Marak 1983, Ejsymont and Sherman 2000). Samples were collected both day and night using a 61-cm bongo. Net tow speed was approximately 1.5 knots. Double oblique tows were a minimum of 5-mintues in duration, and fished from the surface to within 5-m of the seabed or to a maximum depth of 200-m. The volume filtered of all collections was measured with mechanical flowmeters mounted across the mouth of each net. Mesh size of the net differed between the programs, and was 505-μm during MARMAP and 333-μm during EcoMon. Samples were preserved in 5% formalin.

Processing of most samples was conducted at the Morski Instytut Rybacki in Szczecin, Poland; the remaining samples were processed at the NEFSC or the Atlantic Reference Center, St Andrews, Canada. Larvae were identified to the lowest possible taxon and enumerated for each sample. Plankton tows differ with respect to volume of water filtered and maximum tow depth. In order to make data values comparable, these values were normalized through the use of a standard haul factor: h = z * 10 / v, where z = maximum tow depth (in meters) and v = volume of water filtered (in meters cubed). Taxon abundance for each station was standardized to number under 10 • m-2 sea surface (Morse 1989).

References:
Azarovitz TR. 1981. A brief historical review of the Woods Hole Laboratory trawl survey time series. Canadian Special Publication of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. 58:62-7.

Ejsymont L, Sherman K. 2000. Poland and the United States' cooperation in fisheries ecology: a multidecadal retrospective. Bulletin Sea Fisheries Institute Gdynia. 3(3-10).

Jossi JW, Marak RR. 1983. MARMAP plankton survey manual. US Department of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memo. NMFS-F/NEC-21:258 p. URL: http://nefsc.noaa.gov/publications/tm/pdfs/tmfnec21.pdf

Morse W. 1989. Catchability, Growth, and Mortality of Larval Fishes. Fish Bul. 87(3):417-46. URL: http://fishbull.noaa.gov/873/morse.pdf

Richardson DE, Hare JA, Overholtz WJ, Johnson DL. Development of long-term larval indices for Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) on the northeast US continental shelf. 2010. Ices Journal of Marine Science. 67(4):617-27. doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsp276

Data Processing Description

Relative proportion (rel_proportion) of larvae was calculated yearly for each of the 47 EcoMon strata for six bi-monthly seasons (1 = January-February, 2 = March-April, 3 = May-June, 4 = July-August, 5 = September-October, and 6 = November-December). The mean number of larvae per stratum (mean_abund) was estimated from all tows made in a stratum in a single bi-monthly season in each year. The absolute number of larvae in the stratum was estimated by multiplying the mean abundance of larvae within a stratum in the bi-monthly season and year by stratum area (m^2). Thus, there were six estimates of larval abundance for each stratum per year, one for each season. If no samples were collected in a stratum for a year and season a 'nd' was placed in the mean_abund and rel_proportion columns.

BCO-DMO Processing:
- Sorted data by taxa, year, season, strata.
- Replaced spaces with underscores in taxa names.
- Modified parameter names to conform with BCO-DMO naming conventions.
- Replaced 'NaN' with 'nd'.

Data Files

File
ichthyoplankton.csv (Comma Separated Values (.csv), 16.64 MB) MD5:6aae6ca49f1def73fde09fc2e456f3c1 Primary data file for dataset ID 560448

Supplemental Files

File
Azarovitz (1981) paper filename: Azarovitz1981.pdf (Portable Document Format (.pdf), 910.60 KB) MD5:aabd40787953dfe7b57d01124ca8d915 Azarovitz (1981) paper
Figure1 EcoMon Strata Map filename: Figure1_EcoMon_StrataMap.pdf (Portable Document Format (.pdf), 267.41 KB) MD5:dbb7896d1f51d91f85460aca04ebaec9 Figure1 EcoMon Strata Map

More Information about this dataset

Funding Sources

None available yet

Deployments

Deployment	Synonyms	Start Date	Platform	Investigator
NEFSC-Bottom_Trawl		1963-09-01	NOAA Ship Trawl-Survey-Vessel		data info

Instruments

MARMAP Bongo Net

Supplied Name:

Supplied Description:

Instrument Type

Generic Name: MARMAP Bongo Net

Community Identifier: http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/L22/current/NETT0089/

Generic Description:

A non-opening-closing descendant of the McGowan/Brown Bongo net, consisting of a pair of circular hoops (61 cm in diameter and 30 cm long) joined by a central yoke which is clamped to the towing cable. The nets are 61 cm in diameter and have a cylindrical section 147 cm long and a conical section 153 cm long. Mesh sizes from 0.1 to 0.5 mm have been used, but normally 0.333 mm is used. A flowmeter is present in each hoop [Posgay and Marak (1980), Fig. 1].

Parameters

Date and time formats are described in python strftime() syntax.

Supplied Name	Supplied description	Supplied Units	Standard Name
taxa	Species/taxonomic name.	text	taxon
year	4 digit GMT year	dimensionless	year
season	1 digit code for bimonthly sample collection period: 1=January-February; 2=March-April; 3=May-June; 4=July-August; 5=September-October; 6=November-December.	dimensionless	season
strata	2 digit code for EcoMon plankton strata.	dimensionless	no_bcodmo_term
lat	Strata latitude center in decimal degrees	decimal degrees	lat
lon	Strata longitude center in decimal degrees	decimal degrees	lon
area	Strata area in square kilometers	square kilomters (km^2)	no_bcodmo_term
mean_abund	Strata mean abundance (mean number of larvae under 10 m^2 sea surface)	mean number of adults	abundance
rel_proportion	Strata relative proportion (% collected in a stratum for that season and year)	percentage (%)	relative_abund