Two decades of the North Pacific CPR program

• Main Authors: Batten, SD, Chiba, S, Sydeman, W
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Marine Sciences; Pacific; Long Beach; Sonia; North Atlantic; Alaska
• Online Access: http://plymsea.ac.uk/id/eprint/9421/; http://plymsea.ac.uk/id/eprint/9421/1/40%20Two%20decades%20of%20the%20North%20Pacific%20CPR%20program.pdf; https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56a6b01dd8af105db2511b83/t/5e2248643e92f954392fcb2e/1579305065471/PICES_Press_2020_CPR_20years.pdf

The North Pacific Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) Survey is essentially as old as PICES itself. At the very first PICES meeting, held in 1992, a proposal was made by Dr. Tim Parsons to the BIO Committee for a trans-Pacific CPR survey, to be initiated as soon as possible (PICES, 1992). Discussions between PICES scientists and the North Atlantic CPR survey team, run by (then) the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS) in the UK, led to a trial tow from Long Beach, California to Alaska in the summer of 1997, behind an oil tanker. The samples were processed, and in 1998 Sonia Batten attended the MONITOR Task Team meeting to present results of this demonstration tow. An Advisory Panel (AP-CPR) was convened under MONITOR to implement a regular CPR survey that would contribute to the PICES 4Cs (Climate Change and Carrying Capacity) program