A Portable Cruising Speed Net: Expanding Global Collection of Sea Surface Plankton Data

Ulla Von Ammon,Andrew Jeffs,Xavier Pochon,Lynnath E Beckley,Emmanuel Malpot,Aimee Van Der Reis,Deb Goodwin,Anastasija Zaiko

doi:10.3389/fmars.2020.615458

Ulla Von Ammon, Andrew Jeffs + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.615458

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Abstract

Plankton are central to planetary ecology, generating 50% of Earth’s atmospheric oxygen and forming the largest system of interconnected life at the base of the marine food chain. Yet, current oceanographic models aimed at predicting global climate change lack high-resolution biological data, emphasizing the need for innovative approaches to collect plankton biodiversity and distribution data over larger spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales. The significant number of boats, ranging from small sailing yachts to large commercial vessels, that ply the world’s oceans every day could help scientists collect thousands of valuable plankton samples. Traditional Plankton Nets (TPN) are not suited to the speed of a recreational craft cruising in the high seas (i.e., at speeds &gt;2 knots). We developed and validated the efficiency of a lightweight, easily deployable Cruising Speed Net (CSN) that enables the collection of ocean surface micro- and mesoplankton at speeds up to 5 knots. Field testing was conducted during two distinct research cruises along coastal and oceanic latitudinal gradients (SSV Robert C. Seamans in New Zealand and RV Investigator in the south-east Indian Ocean). DNA metabarcoding performed on the collected plankton samples showed the TPN and CSN yielded identical sequence-based diversity at low speed, with the CSN also effective at higher speed for characterizing latitudinal distribution of plankton communities. The CSN represents a valuable new tool for expanding the global collection of plankton data.

Highlights

Marine plankton play critical roles in marine ecosystems, being at the basis of oceanic food webs and responsible for generating at least half of the Earth’s oxygen (Sekerci and Petrovskii, 2015)
The 76 plankton samples collected in this study (51 samples from the New Zealand and 25 samples from the Australian case studies) generated a total of 12,088,295 raw reads, which decreased to 5,982,714 reads (2,839 Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs)) post filtering
Following the rarefaction analysis (Supplementary Figures 3, 4), each sample was rarefied to 23,440 sequence reads, which resulted in the removal of five low read count samples from the downstream analysis (2 Cruising Speed Net (CSN) samples at station 21, CSN and Traditional Plankton Nets (TPN) samples at stations 22, and CSN at station 34; Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Marine plankton play critical roles in marine ecosystems, being at the basis of oceanic food webs and responsible for generating at least half of the Earth’s oxygen (Sekerci and Petrovskii, 2015). Influenced by abiotic and biotic parameters of the water masses, plankton assemblages are very sensitive to rapid changes in the ecology of the marine ecosystem related to global warming or other anthropogenic influences (Landry et al, 2020). Oceanographic models aimed at predicting global ecological changes (Follows et al, 2007; Follows and Dutkiewicz, 2011; Ward et al, 2014) lack good quality, high resolution data on the nature and dynamics of marine plankton biodiversity.

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