Abstract:
When Victor Hensen deployed the first
true plankton1 net in 1887, he and his
colleagues were attempting to answer
three fundamental questions: What
planktonic organisms are present in
the ocean? How many of each type are
present? How does the plankton’s composition
change over time? Although
answering these questions has remained
a central goal of oceanographers, the
sophisticated tools available to enumerate
planktonic organisms today offer
capabilities that Hensen probably could
never have imagined.
Description:
Author Posting. © Oceanography Society, 2007. This article is posted here by permission of Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 20, 2 (2007): 172-187.
