In their 2010 Nature paper, Daniel Boyce, Marlon Lewis and Boris Worm compiled a chlorophyll index by combining in situ chlorophyll and Secchi disk depth measurements that spanned a more than 100-year time period and showed a decrease in marine phytoplankton biomass of approximately 1% of the global median per year over the past century. However, eight decades of data on phytoplankton biomass collected in the North Atlantic by the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey, show an increase in an index of chlorophyll (Phytoplankton Colour Index) in both the Northeast and Northwest Atlantic basins, and other long-term time series, including the Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT)8, the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series (BATS) and the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) also indicate increased phytoplankton biomass over the last 20–50 years. These findings, which were not discussed by Boyce et al., are not in accordance with their conclusions and illustrate the importance of using consistent observations when estimating long-term trends.
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McQuatters-Gollop, A., Reid, P.C., Edwards, M., Burkill, P., Castellani, C., Batten, S., Gieskes, W., Beare, D., Bidigare, R., Head, E., Johnson, R., Kahru, M., Koslow, J. and Pena, M. (2011). Is there a decline in marine phytoplankton? Nature 472:E6-E7.
Plankton and Policy 