Site 35: Gulf of Trieste (Northern Adriatic Sea)

In its strategie plan, ICES recognized its role in making scientific information accessible to the public as well as to fisheries and environmental assessment groups. During the 1999 Annua! Science Conference, ICES requested the Oceanography Committee working groups to develop data products and summaries that could be routinely provided to the ICES community via the ICES website. The Working Group on Zooplankton Ecology (WGZE) has given priority to producing a summaq report on zooplankton activities in the ICES Area based on the time-series obtained from national monitoring programmes. This is the seventh summary of zooplankton monitoring in the ICES Area and expands on previous reports with improved analysis, data, and presentation. This year's report includes eight new monitoring sites: five from the western North Atlantic, two from the northern Baltic, and one from the northern Skagerrak. Far each of the 37 zooplankton monitoring sites (Figure 1), WGZE has continued to seek aut and include co-sampled temperature and chlorophyll data, as well as any available phytoplankton and nutrient data. Although this report follows the structure of previous reports, it now features a new"standardized" graphical visualization far each site. This new presentation quickly summarizes the seasonal cycle and interannual variability of the zooplankton at each site and offers a quick overview of zooplankton interactions and/or synchrony with other co-sampled biological and hydrographic variables at the site. Each site also includes a long-term assessment of the monitoring area through comparison with a 100-year record of sea surface temperature (SST) data and up to 60 years of continuous plankton recorder (CPR) zooplankton data (when available near that site). Finally, this report concludes with a basin-wide overview of SST, phytoplankton, and zooplankton across the entire NorthAtlantic, using data from the CPR surveys (Figure 2). This year's report also includes a brief introduction to six Mediterranean zooplankton monitoring sites (Figure l, yellow stars), a tribute to our Mediterranean colleagues, as ICES and the Meditenanean Science Commission (CIESM) prepare far the October 2008 "Joint ICES/CIESM Workshop to Compare Zooplankton Ecology and Methodologies Between the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic" (WKZEM; www.wkzem.net). This report benefits from contributions by members of WGZE and colleagues in ICES Member Countries who lead zooplankton time-series programmes. A list of contributors to this report can be found a t the end of the report. The report was compiled and edited by Todd D. O'Brien, Angel L6pez-Urrutia, Peter H. Wìebe, and Steve Hay. The editors thank all those who contributed data and/or material to this report far their invaluable contributions.