Plymouth recently marked the 90th Birthday of the Continuous Plankton Recorder. The survey is one of the longest-running oceanographic monitoring programmes in the world and has helped shape our understanding of oceans both in Britain and beyond.

Luke Pollard MP said:

“The Continuous Plankton Recorder’s 90th birthday is a real moment to thank all those scientists, mariners and researchers who have dedicated their lives to building this invaluable and unrivalled data on our oceans. Plymouth truly is Britain’s Ocean City, but it also holds data on the oceans the world over thanks to the work of the team behind the Continuous Plankton Recorder.

 

With the climate crisis threatening habitats and species at sea as well as on land, this data is vital in being able to understand humanity’s negative effects on our ocean life. I hope in the years to come instead of charting the decline in plankton and changes in their distribution, it will show improvements as the world steps up to meet the climate crisis.

 

The team in Plymouth today and the pioneers of 90 years ago deserve our thanks and support. So much of the work undertaken in Plymouth deserves a much bigger platform and the CPR is one of those.”

You can read more about the Continuous Plankton Recorder here