CEFAS6bd8041f-68bc-4b20-a2bc-645d9bda17f1 English dataset Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory (CEFAS) Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory Pakefield Road Lowestoft Suffolk NR33 0HT UK data.manager@cefas.co.uk pointOfContact 2025-09-24T09:55:20 EPSG Geodetic Parameter Registry 2022-01-07 revision WGS 84 Zooplankton abundance data derived from the Plankton Imager system from the Western English Channel and Eastern Irish Sea from 2016 to 2019 DC006 zooplankton data 2020-04-20 publication 2025-09-24 revision 2020-04-20 creation CEFAS20507 https://data.cefas.co.uk These data are abundances (in numbers per meters cubed) of zooplankton taxa, calculated from the analysis of images taken using the Plankton Imager system also included are station positions and sampling date / times. The images where collected using the PI (formerly known as Plankton Image Analyser (PIA)), during the PELTIC (Pelagic ecosystem in the western English Channel and eastern Celtic Sea) surveys from 2016 to 2019, on board the RV Cefas Endeavour. Zooplankton samples and images were collected during night hours only at stations which were selected to match the collection of other environmental parameters. Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory (CEFAS) Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory Pakefield Road Lowestoft Suffolk NR33 0HT UK data.manager@cefas.co.uk originator Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory (CEFAS) Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory Pakefield Road Lowestoft Suffolk NR33 0HT UK data.manager@cefas.co.uk custodian Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory (CEFAS) Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory Pakefield Road Lowestoft Suffolk NR33 0HT UK data.manager@cefas.co.uk distributor Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory (CEFAS) data.manager@cefas.co.uk owner notPlanned Zooplankton SeaDataNet P03 parameter discovery vocabulary 2011-03-25 revision Plankton abundance per unit volume of the water column SeaDataNet P02 parameter discovery vocabulary 2011-03-25 revision Species distribution GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0 2008-06-01 publication Water column SeaVoX Vertical Co-ordinate Coverages 2010-05-18 revision Marine Environmental Data and Information Network MEDIN metadata record availability 2012-01-11 publication data.gov.uk MEDIN metadata record availability 2012-01-11 publication otherRestrictions noLimitations otherRestrictions Public data - no limitations to reuse English biota -10.00 -2.00 48.00 52.50 2016-10-06 2019-10-07 Delimited Geographic Information System Unknown https://data.cefas.co.uk/view/20507 Cefas Data Portal download The Cefas Data Portal contains metadata records and data sets available to download and connect to in support of our commitment to open science. Data is available in the following formats: CSV, ESRI Shapefile. The data can also be accessed via the WFS and WMS protocols. dataset INSPIRE Data Specification on Species Distribution – Technical Guidelines 2013-12-10 publication false See the referenced specification Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services 2010-12-08 publication true See the referenced specification The Plankton Imager is a high-speed colour line scan-based imaging instrument connected to the ships water supply and can take images of all zooplankton of size above 20 microns passing through a cell at a 27 litre per minute flow rate. The flow cell is 25mm brass tube that has two quartz optical windows halfway along its length. The flow cell at the windows is square, with the same cross-sectional area as the 25mm tube. A Basler 2048-70kc camera, sampling at 70K lines per second, images the water running through the flow cell. The flow rate is monitored by a Bell electro-magnetic flow meter. Colour images are captured using an EPIX E4 frame store. RGB composite images are constructed by joining consecutive lines together, thresholding and extracting a region of interest ROI, or vignette, that is saved to hard drive as a TIF file. Raw images are stored to maximize dynamic range of the captured particles. These are converted to 8-bit resolution through a process of scaling and conversion from 12 to 8-bit resolution, for viewing and for subsequent processing. Due to operational requirements (continuous image processing while maintaining manageable file-size), only those particles within the mesozooplankton range 200 microns – 2cm were processed and saved. In order to reproduce the sub-sampling procedure used for physical samples (as collected with a ring net), random images were extracted until each sample contained approximately 200 mesozooplankton individuals and then identified using the with the Plankton Imager software to derive taxon groupings which were then validated by an expert taxonomist manually. The following paper describes the Plankton Imager system in further detail. Pitois *et al.* (2018). Comparison of a Cost-Effective Integrated Plankton Sampling and Imaging Instrument with Traditional Systems for Mesozooplankton Sampling in the Celtic Sea. Frontiers in Marine Science. 5. `10.3389/fmars.2018.00005`_. .. _`10.3389/fmars.2018.00005`: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2018.00005/full MEDIN 3.1.1