pdf SO-CPR Expert Group Report 2022

EG-Continuous Plankton Recorder and the SCAR Southern Ocean CPR Survey (SO-CPR) 2020-22 Report

Expert Group of the Life Sciences Group

Report Author(s): Kunio T. Takahashi (Japan) and John A. Kitchener (Australia)

Summary of activities from 2020-22

Since the last report 2020, we have completed over 20 CPR tows during the 2020/21 and 2021/22 Antarctic field season. Due to the influence of COVID-19, each country reduced the Southern Ocean research, so the number of towing was about half of the normal level.

As a task of the EG-CPR of ten years, we published a special report on the “Status and Trends of Southern Ocean Zooplankton” as  pdf SCAR Bulletin 206 (3.54 MB) in June 2021. This report brings together all information from 25 years of the SO-CPR Survey into one report. This report also identifies any trends (seasonal or long-term) in relation to changes in abundance, shifts in distribution, timing of events, or changes in composition and community composition.

Our important future task for maintaining high quality data is developing and enhancing the skills of current and new technicians. We have held standards workshop by technicians form each country every two years, but due to the influence of COVID-19, we have not been holding them for the past three years. It is difficult to hold online because we need to actually observe the sample. We are planning to hold a workshop in 2023. The purpose of the workshop is to ensure that high standards of data quality are being maintained, in terms of species identification and methodology, among the main analysts of the SO-CPR survey, and to discuss future training methods and a future roadmap for the SO-CPR program. We also aim to publish SO-CPR processing manuals and zooplankton counting rulebooks for the purpose of training for new technicians.