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The near-surface layer of the ocean is a habitat in which plankton are subjected to very different stresses to those in deeper layers. These include high turbulence and illumination, allowing increased visibility to predators, and exposure to harmful UV radiation. To provide insights into stress caused by UV, we examined the occurrence of protective UV-absorbing compounds called mycosporine-like amino acids (MAAs) in seston and zooplankton along an Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT) between 45°S and 50°N. Seston contained most MAAs per unit phytoplankton carbon in the northern Atlantic gyre and equatorial region and this coincided with distribution of the nitrogen fixing cyanobacterium Trichodesmium spp. and increased UV transparency but not irradiance. Asterina-330 was the most abundant MAA in the seston. MAAs were detected in a third of the zooplankton tested and these taxa varied greatly both in the amount and diversity of the MAAs that they contained with copepods in temperate regions containing highest concentration of MAAs. Most commonly found MAAs in zooplankton were palythine and shinorine. Juvenile copepods were found not to contain any MAAs. We determined abundance and richness of zooplankton inhabiting the top 50 cm of the ocean. Zooplankton abundance and genera richness was low in the surface waters in contrast to the dome-shaped latitudinal trend in genera richness commonly found from depth-integrated zooplankton sampling. The lack of any measurable MAA compounds in nauplii across the whole transect was concomitant with their severe (3–6-fold) reduction in nauplii densities in the near-surface layer, as compared to the underlying water column. Overall we suggest that the UV stress on life near the surface, particularly in the warmer, oligotrophic and brightly-lit low latitudes, imposes radically different pressures on zooplankton communities compared to the rest of the epipelagic.

Since 1995 the Atlantic Meridional Transect program (AMT - www.amt-uk.org) has undertaken extensive measurements of oceanographic and atmospheric variables on a passage between the UK and destinations in the South Atlantic (Falkland Islands, Chile, Uruguay and South Africa). This program, which spans more than 100° of latitude, crosses a range of ecosystems from sub-polar to tropical, from eutrophic shelf seas and upwelling systems, to oligotrophic mid-ocean gyres (Fig. 1). The AMT was originally conceived to utilise the bi-annual passage of the RRS James Clark Ross (JCR) between its home-base in the UK and its field-base in the Falklands. This initial phase, from 1995 to 2000 was largely funded by the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) with additional support from NASA in order to test and ground-truth satellite algorithms of ocean colour (Aiken & Bale, 2000). The opportunities offered by this initiative meant that this series of repeated bi-annual cruises rapidly developed into a coordinated study of ocean biodiversity, biogeochemistry and ocean/atmosphere interactions. The second phase, between 2002 and 2006 was funded by a NERC consortium grant which is introduced and summarised in two manuscripts by Robinson (Robinson et al., 2009, Robinson et al., 2006) which form the introduction to special issues of Deep-Sea Research II. This phase utilised a hypothesis-led approach concerning the biogeochemistry of the different Atlantic Ocean provinces. In the third phase, from 2008 to present, funding from NERC was directed through the OCEANS2025 program and latterly through UK National Capability. During this phase, cruises switched from bi-annual to annual, taking place during the boreal autumn (austral spring). A summary of the annual and seasonal coverage of AMT cruises is given in Figure 2. Throughout the lifetime of the AMT program the objectives have evolved to address topical research questions whilst enabling the maintenance of a continuous set of observations relevant to global issues that are raised throughout the most recent IPCC assessment (Rhein et al., 2013) and UK environmental strategy.

Naturally occurring red tides and harmful algal blooms (HABs) are of increasing importance in the coastal environment and can have dramatic effects on coastal benthic and epipelagic communities worldwide. Such blooms are often unpredictable, irregular or of short duration, and thus determining the underlying driving factors is problematic. The dinoflagellate Karenia mikimotoi is an HAB, commonly found in the western English Channel and thought to be responsible for occasional mass finfish and benthic mortalities. We analysed a 19-year coastal time series of phytoplankton biomass to examine the seasonality and interannual variability of K. mikimotoi in the western English Channel and determine both the primary environmental drivers of these blooms as well as the effects on phytoplankton productivity and oxygen conditions. We observed high variability in timing and magnitude of K. mikimotoi blooms, with abundances reaching >1000 cells mL −1 at 10 m depth, inducing up to a 12-fold increase in the phytoplankton carbon content of the water column. No long-term trends in the timing or magnitude of K. mikimotoi abundance were evident from the data. Key driving factors were identified as persistent summertime rainfall and the resultant input of low-salinity high-nutrient river water. The largest bloom in 2009 was associated with highest annual primary production and led to considerable oxygen depletion at depth, most likely as a result of enhanced biological breakdown of bloom material; however, this oxygen depletion may not affect zooplankton. Our data suggests that K. mikimotoi blooms are not only a key and consistent feature of western English Channel productivity, but importantly can potentially be predicted from knowledge of rainfall or river discharge.

In a warming climate, differential shifts in the seasonal timing of predators and prey have been suggested to lead to trophic “mismatches” that decouple primary, secondary and tertiary production. We tested this hypothesis using a 25-year time-series of weekly sampling at the Plymouth L4 site, comparing 57 plankton taxa spanning 4 trophic levels. During warm years, there was a weak tendency for earlier timings of spring taxa and later timings of autumn taxa. While this is in line with many previous findings, numerous exceptions existed and only a few taxa (e.g. Gyrodinium spp., Pseudocalanus elongatus, and Acartia clausi) showed consistent, strong evidence for temperature-related timing shifts, revealed by all 4 of the timing indices that we used. Also, the calculated offsets in timing (i.e. “mismatches”) between predator and prey were no greater in extreme warm or cold years than during more average years. Further, the magnitude of these offsets had no effect on the “success” of the predator, in terms of their annual mean abundance or egg production rates. Instead numerous other factors override, including: inter-annual variability in food quantity, high food baseline levels, turnover rates and prolonged seasonal availability, allowing extended periods of production. Furthermore many taxa, notably meroplankton, increased well before the spring bloom. While theoretically a chronic mismatch, this likely reflects trade-offs for example in predation avoidance. Various gelatinous taxa (Phaeocystis, Noctiluca, ctenophores, appendicularians, medusae) may have reduced these predation constraints, with variable, explosive population outbursts likely responding to improved conditions. The match–mismatch hypothesis may apply for highly seasonal, pulsed systems or specialist feeders, but we suggest that the concept is being over-extended to other marine systems where multiple factors compensate.

© 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Primary productivity and subsequent carbon cycling in the coastal zone have a significant impact on the global carbon budget. It is currently unclear how anthropogenic activity could alter these budgets but long term coastal time series of hydrological, biogeochemical and biological measurements represent a key means to better understand past drivers, and hence to predicting future seasonal and inter-annual variability in carbon fixation in coastal ecosystems. An 8-year time series of primary production from 2003 to 2010, estimated using a recently developed absorption-based algorithm, was used to determine the nature and extent of change in primary production at a coastal station (L4) in the Western English Channel (WEC). Analysis of the seasonal and inter-annual variability in production demonstrated that on average, nano- and pico-phytoplankton account for 48% of the total carbon fixation and micro-phytoplankton for 52%. A recent decline in the primary production of nano- and pico-phytoplankton from 2005 to 2010 was observed, corresponding with a decrease in winter nutrient concentrations and a decrease in the biomass of Phaeocystis sp. Micro-phytoplankton primary production (PPM) remained relatively constant over the time series and was enhanced in summer during periods of high precipitation. Increases in sea surface temperature, and decreases in wind speeds and salinity were associated with later spring maxima in PPM. Together these trends indicate that predicted increases in temperature and decrease in wind speeds in future would drive later spring production whilst predicted increases in precipitation would also continue these blooms throughout the summer at this site.

We derived size-specific photosynthetic rates for eastern boundary upwelling regions using satellite ocean colour, by a simple approach that links photosynthetic rate to phytoplankton size classes with the optical absorption of phytoplankton. Comparisons with a conventional chlorophyll-based photosynthetic algorithm and with in situ measurements showed good agreement with our approach ( r 2 = 0.728, p

Satellite derived sea surface temperature (SST) and chlorophyll data are used to characterise the period of upwelling during a cruise on which two Lagrangian drift experiments were conducted off the Iberian Atlantic coast in August 1998. During the cruise there was a prolonged period of equator-ward winds which favour upwelling; three distinct maxima were observed in the meteorological data interspersed with periods of relaxation. The SST and chlorophyll imagery show upwelling to be active with distinct offshore filaments that are cooler and of higher chlorophyll concentration than the surrounding oceanic water; these filaments represent an important cross-shelf transport mechanism. A front detection methodology has been applied to satellite images and suggests that these filaments are distinct, long-lived features, characterised by enhanced primary production.

In this paper we evaluate whether the assimilation of remotely-sensed optical data into a marine ecosystem model improves the simulation of biogeochemistry in a shelf sea. A localized Ensemble Kalman filter was used to assimilate weekly diffuse light attenuation coefficient data, Kd(443) from SeaWiFs, into an ecosystem model of the western English Channel. The spatial distributions of (unassimilated) surface chlorophyll from satellite, and a multivariate time series of eighteen biogeochemical and optical variables measured in situ at one long-term monitoring site were used to evaluate the system performance for the year 2006. Assimilation reduced the root mean square error and improved the correlation with the assimilated Kd(443) observations, for both the analysis and, to a lesser extent, the forecast estimates, when compared to the reference model simulation. Improvements in the simulation of (unassimilated) ocean colour chlorophyll were less evident, and in some parts of the Channel the simulation of this data deteriorated. The estimation errors for the (unassimilated) in situ data were reduced for most variables with some exceptions, e.g. dissolved nitrogen. Importantly, the assimilation adjusted the balance of ecosystem processes by shifting the simulated food web towards the microbial loop, thus improving the estimation of some properties, e.g. total particulate carbon. Assimilation of Kd(443) outperformed a comparative chlorophyll assimilation experiment, in both the estimation of ocean colour data and in the simulation of independent in situ data. These results are related to relatively low error in Kd(443) data, and because it is a bulk optical property of marine ecosystems. Assimilation of remotely-sensed optical properties is a promising approach to improve the simulation of biogeochemical and optical variables that are relevant for ecosystem functioning and climate change studies.