Intercalibration sites for plant tools relating to the Water Framework Directive

One of the classification tools listed under the Water Framework Directive (WFD) lists the composition, abundance and biomass of phytoplankton community and the composition and abundance of other aquatic flora as part of the biological quality elements that needs to be considered for transitional and coastal waters. Specifically, it outlines the following criteria that need to be related to type-specific, undisturbed conditions for phytoplankton, macroalgae and angiosperms.

Under the Water Framework Directive, a number of intercalibration sites have been selected by Member States in transitional and coastal waters that will be classified under moderate to good and good to high status using the classification tools. Additional information from these selected sites is needed to make this initial classification under the WFD.

Cardigan Bay has been chosen as a good to high status site for England and Wales. We have used this trip to collect additional information on light conditions, nutrients and phytoplankton. Due to technical difficulties, light profiles were not able to be measured. The Prince Madog did have automatic sensors at 4.5m depth which recorded salinity, turbidity, temperature, transmissance, fluorescence, and weather conditions.

Water samples were collected from hand held Niskin bottles. Samples were collected for dissolved inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus, suspended solids, chlorophyll a and phytoplankton abundance and biomass. Niskin samples were taken at depths of 4.5m to be able to correlate against the ship's automatic sensors.

Further samples were taken from the seawater outlet, which were analysed for the above water quality parameters.