Review of the phytoplankton monitoring programme and research activities in 2008

The National Monitoring programme for phytoplankton is a well established programme and this was shown through the improvement and refinement of Phytoplankton shellfish and finfish sites around the country. One important development in the last 2 years has been to increase the number of sentinel sites. A sentinel site is a designated sampling site where a total community Phytoplankton cell count and identification is carried out. The number of sentinel sites has increased from 11 in 2005 to 24 in 2008. This means a better coverage of all the bays around the country. The number of phytoplankton samples analysed in 2008 has seen an increase from the previous year