Abundance and distribution pattern of plankton in Anzali Lagoon

A comprehensive hydrobiological and hydrological investigation conducted in Anzali lagoon from 1997 to 2000. During this study, a total of 5 phylum and 62 genera of phytoplanktons and 10 phylum and 50 genera of zooplankton were identified. The results showed that for phytoplanktons the abundance of Cyanophyta, Chrysophyta, Chlorophyta, Euglenophyta and Pyrrophyta were calculated 61.8%, 29.1%, 8.2% 0.7% and 0.2%, respectively. The most abundance of zooplankton belongs to Rotatoria (60.8%), after that other group of zooplankton had more abundance consist of Copepoda and its nauplii (17.2%), Ciliophora (9.6%) and Rhizopoda (6.6%). Other zooplanktons had very few abundance. According to obtained results, western region of lagoon (Abkenar) is a rich region of planktons in which the most dominant phylum of phytoplanktons was from Cyanophyta with genera of Oscillatoria, Anabaenopsis, Microcystis. The most abundance of zooplanktons were genera of Polyarthra, Brachionus and Keratella and from Arthropoda phylum, the most abundance genus was found Cyclops and its nauplii. The Planktonic study indicated that Anzali lagoon is one of the richest lagoon in Iran with high production and potential water for feeding of fishes and their larva