Puget Sound Zooplankton Monitoring Program (Salish Sea, USA), starting in 2014

Data Records

The data in this sampling event resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 8,470 records.

2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Keister J E, Winans A, Herrmann B, Kalata O, Mayorga E (2024). Puget Sound Zooplankton Monitoring Program (Salish Sea, USA), starting in 2014. Version 1.1. United States Geological Survey. Samplingevent dataset. https://doi.org/10.15468/e92gvx

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is United States Geological Survey. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 980a91f0-0752-4b60-a68a-42ed670eaae3.  United States Geological Survey publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.

Keywords

Samplingevent; Specimen; WASHINGTON; COASTAL; ZOOPLANKTON

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

Puget Sound, Washington State, USA. Puget Sound is part of the Salish Sea.

Taxonomic Coverage

N/A

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

Zooplankton are the cornerstone of pelagic food webs. They serve as indicators of ecosystem function and provide an effective means of monitoring ecosystem changes to better understand how physical stressors, both man-made and natural, affect marine waters. As such, monitoring changes in zooplankton communities can provide crucial insight needed to diagnose ecosystem health, changes in production, and fisheries. This program was designed to assist efforts in 1) understanding how changes in the local vs oceanic physical environment translate up the food web in Puget Sound, 2) measuring how the prey of salmon and other fishes varies spatio-temporally and correlates with fish survival, and 3) providing improved forecasting tools and guidance towards management decisions to set harvest expectations and optimize recovery strategies. In brief, this program is a collaborative effort among multiple tribes, agencies, and organizations to sample zooplankton throughout Puget Sound and adjacent northern waters (Bellingham Bay and the San Juan Islands). The University of Washington oversees the collections, analyzes the samples, and openly provides data to stakeholders for use in science and management. Sampling occurs bi-weekly or monthly during the productive March-October period, and monthly through winter at some stations, and consists of two different protocols—a vertical tow of a ring net and an oblique tow of a bongo net. Sampling locations were chosen to represent large-scale, regional variability among the basins of Puget Sound. Field protocols appropriate to the program were developed in consultation with zooplankton experts from Canada, Washington, and Oregon. In the laboratory, zooplankton are resolved to species or lowest taxonomic level possible; life stage, abundance, and biomass data are recorded.

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

Sampling for zooplankton is conducted at regular stations visited by project partners using a common methodology. Two net tows are carried out at each station: a 60-cm diameter ring net (200 µm mesh) towed vertically from 5 m off the bottom (or a maximum of 200 m depth) to the surface; and a 60-cm diameter bongo net (335 µm mesh) towed obliquely through the top 30 m of the water column. The target sampling frequency ranges from biweekly to monthly depending on the station and other considerations. Sampling is conducted during daytime. Project partners that have collected samples include the Environmental Protection Agency, Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, King County, Kwiáht, Lummi Nation, Nisqually Indian Tribe, NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, Stillaguamish Tribe, Tulalip Tribes, Washington Department of Ecology, and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. In the laboratory at the University of Washington, zooplankton are quantitatively subsampled and microscopically counted. All individuals are identified to species or larger taxonomic grouping, and by sex and life stages whenever possible, within each sample.

Method step description:

1. The starting point data file for OBIS Darwin Core alignment was an Excel file provided by staff from the Principal Investigator's lab at the University of Washington. This file was exported from the UW lab’s internal database. It is in the same format and contains the same information as the Excel file that is publicly distributed on the King County PSZMP webpage, https://green2.kingcounty.gov/ScienceLibrary/Document.aspx?ArticleID=556. However, the file used involved updates and corrections applied by lab staff based on questions arising during the initial OBIS alignment work. All processing steps starting from the source Excel file are explicitly encoded in the Jupyter notebooks used to carry out the alignment, written in Python; this code, including additional documentation, is available at https://github.com/nanoos-pnw/obis-pszmp.

Bibliographic Citations

1. Fisher, J., D. Kimmel, T. Ross, S. Batten, E. Bjorkstedt, M. Galbraith, K. Jacobson, J. Keister, A. Sastri, K. Suchy, S. Zeman, and I. Perry. 2020. Copepod responses to, and recovery from, the recent marine heatwave in the Northeast Pacific. PICES Press vol. 28(1): 65-70.
2. Greene, C., B. Curry, J. Newton, J. Keister, I. Kemp, D. Beauchamp, E. Lessard, K. Stark, and G. Hannach. 2019. Linking environmental and biotic variation to growth and survival of juvenile Chinook salmon in Puget Sound. SSMSP Technical Report. Available at: https://marinesurvivalproject.com/resources.
3. Hiltunen, M., U. Strandberg, A.K. Winans, D.A. Beauchamp, M. Kotila, M.T. Brett, and J.E. Keister. Taxonomic, temporal, and spatial variation in zooplankton fatty acid composition in Puget Sound, WA, USA. Estuaries and Coasts: doi.org/10.1007/s12237-021-00973-8.
4. Keister, J.E. and A.K. Winans. 2013. Zooplankton Sampling Protocol. A procedural guide to developing zooplankton monitoring programs in the Salish Sea. 9 pp. Available at: http://faculty.washington.edu/jkeister/jk_outreach.php.
5. Keister, J.E., Herrmann, B., Bos, J. 2022. Zooplankton composition links to climate and salmon survival in a northern temperate fjord. Limnology and Oceanography 9999, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.12208.
6. Khangaonkar, T., A. Nugraha, L. Premathilake, J.E. Keister, and A. Borde. 2020. Projections of algae, eelgrass, and zooplankton ecological interactions in the inner Salish Sea – for future climate, and altered oceanic states. Ecol. Modell. 441: 109420. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2020.109420.
7. Khangaonkar, T., A. Nugraha, S. K. Yun, L. Premathilake, J.E. Keister, and J. Bos. 2021. Propagation of the 2014–2016 northeast Pacific marine heatwave through the Salish Sea. Frontiers in Marine Science 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.787604.
8. Suchy, K.D., E. Olson, S.E. Allen, M. Galbraith, B. Herrmann, J.E. Keister, R.I. Perry, A.R. Sastri, and K. Young. 2023. Seasonal and regional variability of model-based zooplankton biomass in the Salish Sea and evaluation against observations. Progress in Oceanography, 219, 103171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2023.103171.
9. Winans, A. K., B. Herrmann, and J. E. Keister. 2023. Spatio-temporal variation in zooplankton community composition in the southern Salish Sea: changes during the 2015-2016 Pacific marine heatwave. Progress in Oceanography, 214, 103022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2023.103022.

Additional Metadata