Welcome to CMarZ
NOTE: This website is no longer being updated, as of April 2011
Highlights
- View a world map of the CMarZ members locations (no longer available)
- 2009: A Deep Ocean Odyssey: online broadcast for students and the public.
Enjoy new *stunning images of deepwater animals * music and *informal exchanges between scientists and students. - Take a look at our gallery of new species that have been found by CMarZ scientists.
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- Who are we and what are we doing?
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Our goal by 2010:
To produce a global assessment of marine zooplankton biodiversity, including accurate and complete information on species diversity, biomass, biogeographical distribution and genetic diversity.
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We are scientists, students and others interested in zooplankton from around the world who are working toward a taxonomically comprehensive assessment of biodiversity of animal plankton throughout the world ocean, a field project of the Census of Marine Life (see www.CoML.org).
We are studying the 7,000 described species in 15 phyla that comprise the holozooplankton – animals that drift with ocean currents throughout their lives.
We are determining a DNA barcode (short DNA sequence for species identification) for each species.
We sponsor activities such as taxonomic training workshops, sponsors student and researcher visits to CMarZ laboratories.
We maintain a distributed data system of biological and physical information from CMarZ related cruises.
We provide image galleries of living plankton.
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Cruises - sample collection
From 2004 - 2009, CMarZ carried out more than 80 cruises and collected samples from every ocean basin.
Among the many field campaigns were:
Species discovery in SE Asia: Zooplankton taxonomists from Southeast Asia examine samples and teach training courses for students. This effort has resulted in discoveries of numerous new species, including 3 new genera and 19 new species of copepods and mysids. [CMarZ contact: Shuhei Nishida]
Science for the Protection of Indonesian Coastal marine Ecosystems (SPICE) sampled the Strait of Makassar, Spermonde Archipelago (SW Sulawesi) beginning in 2004 and continuing through 2008. Zooplankton species composition and diversity differed between coastal and offshore stations; expert taxonomists consider this center of biodiversity likely to yield new species discoveries. [CMarZ contact: Sigi Schiel]
Species discovery in the deep sea: A CMarZ/NOAA Ocean Exploration cruise during April 2006 yielded samples from meso-, bathy-, and abyssopelagic waters of the NW Atlantic Ocean (Sargasso Sea), with more than 500 species identified. An onboard automated DNA sequencer produced barcodes for ~100 species during the cruise. [CMarZ contacts: Peter Wiebe and Larry Madin]
Inner-space Speciation Project: Zooplankton samples were collected using nets and ROVs during an expedition to the Malaysian waters during October 2007. [CMarZ contact: Larry Madin]
Eastern Atlantic transit: A north-to-south latitudinal transit of the Atlantic Ocean was carried out from the FS Polarstern during October/November 2007. Sampling to 2000m yielded specimens for barcoding-at-sea. [E7; CMarZ contact: Sigi Schiel]
Project Organization
Project offices are located in N. America (University of Connecticut, USA, the lead office), Europe (Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Germany), and Asia (University of Tokyo, Japan).
- The CMarZ Steering Group
- reflects the project’s geographic, taxonomic, and disciplinary diversity
- guides scientific and technical development
- ensures close coordination with other CoML field projects.
For additional information, download the PDF Census of Marine Zooplankton (CMarZ) Science Plan. [2.5MB]