Marine

  • Pseudocalanus

    23rd February 2011 by

    Pseudocalanus was the most abundant copepod in the plankton sample collected at Stonehaven 8th February 2011. Although I dare say there is nothing common about this particular individual once you appreciate the rainbow corona at its anterior (front) end -likely an artefact of the photography 🙂

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  • Kinetically Stormy, Biologically Calm

    21st February 2011 by

    A frothy Stonehaven shoreline (Photo: J. Dunn 21/02/11) On the surface the sea may look stormy, but biologically speaking, this is the period of calm before the storm! At this time of the year, there is very little phytoplankton or zooplankton in the water. Just around the temporal corner, the primary and secondary productivity of the...

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  • The Constant Sampler

    3rd February 2011 by

    The monitoring station at Stonehaven is over 13 years old and the one in Loch Ewe is 9 years old. With a view to collecting decades more data, succession planning is underway. Staff are being trained up, paperwork is going electronic, new shared folders have been established and group email accounts are being set up....

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  • ICES/NAFO Decadal Symposium, May 2011

    18th January 2011 by

    The International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) and Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organisation (NAFO) Symposium on the Variability of the North Atlantic and its Marine Ecosystems During 2000-2009 will be held in Spain in May this year. Abstracts have been submitted describing data collected at the Stonehaven and Loch Ewe monitoring stations. We...

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  • A Brief Introduction to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (directive 2008/56/EC)

    14th January 2011 by

    The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) seeks to establish a framework for community action in the field of marine environmental policy. This directive has called for the achievement of good environmental status (GES) by 2020 with an initial assessment of EU waters by 15 July 2012. The commission decision on criteria and methodological standards on...

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  • Sampling Zooplankton

    15th December 2010 by

    Plankton consists both of plant and animal organisms, ranging in size from a few micrometers (thousands of a millimetre (mm)) to a few centimetres or larger. Generally speaking, the plant plankton (phytoplankton) are smallest, and zooplankton tends to be bigger, although they still span a wide range of sizes, which may appear small to us as...

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  • Bongo nets

    14th December 2010 by

    Bongo nets (one with 68 and the other with 200 micron mesh) being deployed on a pristine, sunny winter day in Loch Ewe (13/12/10). (Photo: P. Maclachlan) It sure looks pretty out there, but we’re told temperatures were -0.8 degrees Cecius (13/12/10). We hope there was plenty of hot tea to hand for the samplers! 

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  • Marine Scotland Interactive on Twitter

    9th December 2010 by

    Now you can follow this blog and new data products from Marine Scotland Interactive (MSI) via twitter. Tweets will be automatically issued when there is a new blog post, and we will also notify followers when we make changes to the MSI web pages. Our twitter feed can be located at http://twitter.com/MSS_Interactive.

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  • Calanus poster

    9th December 2010 by

    One of the Marine Scotland Science posters that was to be presented at the MASTS conference in November 2010 (which was cancelled due to weather) describes some of the data collected at the coastal monitoring sites. It describes patterns in the abundance of Calanoid copepods which are important in marine ecosystems, particularly as food for...

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  • MASTS

    23rd November 2010 by

    The MASTS (Marine Alliance for Science & Technology Scotland) Annual Science Conference takes place in Oban at the end of this month. Included amidst a wide programme, presentations will be made on monitoring results from Stonehaven and Loch Ewe. More details will follow shortly…

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