Coherence of Euphausiid Variability in Southern and Central California Waters

Mark D. Ohman (SIO) and Baldo Marinovic (UCSC)

Link to NOAA Strategic Plan: NOAA's Mission Goal 1: Protect, Restore, and Manage the Use of Coastal and Ocean Resources Through an Ecosystem Approach to Management

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND SPECIFIC PLANS TO ACHIEVE THEM

The objectives of this research project are to (1) enumerate some existing plankton samples that will permit us to fill in gaps in euphausiid time series and (2) to design a digital database that will eventually permit retrieval of the euphausiid data from two regions of the California Current System (Southern California and Central California) from a common web access portal.

In the 10 months of funding we have made substantive progress toward both of these goals. This represents a coordinated research activity of two nodes (SCCOOS and CenCOOS) within the developing PaCOOS network.

RESEARCH ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Some current and archived CalCOFI plankton samples have been analyzed microscopically to determine the dominant species and stage structure of euphausiid populations in the Central California region. These analyses focus on juvenile and adult developmental stages.

In addition, entry and QC of 192,000 records of 39 species of euphausiids has been completed. The data originate from approximately 200 oceanographic cruises in the California Current System from 1949 to 2006, representing part of the career’s work of Dr. Edward Brinton of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, with the taxonomic assistance of Ms. Annie Townsend of the SIO Pelagic Invertebrates Collection. Samples derive primarily from CalCOFI cruises in the region. This digitizing effort was begun before the present grant, but was completed with its support.

All of the above data were imported into MySQL and schema designed to permit queries to these data and to accommodate integration of these data with those from co-PI Marinovic’s research. A web portal was created to permit online access to the enumeration data. The associated GUI-based search engine was designed to permit queries based on year, season, time of day, geographic location, species, phase or developmental stage, sex, and size. The results from the query can be displayed in tabular form or as figures. Data can be reported as individual measurements or statistical averages (mean +/- 95% C.L.), for counts standardized per unit sea surface area or per unit volume.

Fig. 1 Draft version of Euphausiid database developed at the Pelagic Invertebrates Collection, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, that will be expanded to encompass both Southern and Central California euphausiid data.