Zooplankton biomass estimated from digitalized images in Antarctic waters: A calibration exercise

Abstract

The direct measurement of zooplankton biomass following the different analytical procedures normally requires the destruction of the samples. The use of conversion factors to estimate biomass from nondestructive methods is still a challenge. The widespread use of image analyzers and optical counters in biological oceanography provides a useful tool to measure the abundance and size spectrum of zooplanktonic organisms in real or quasi‐real time. Both methodologies measure the equivalent spherical diameter and/or the body area of organisms. In order to estimate biomass from the highly valuable information generated by the size spectrum of the sample, we measured the relationship between individual body area and individual biomass of the most common species and groups of zooplankton in Antarctic waters. The slope of the regression for each different species and groups of taxa was not significantly different from that obtained by pooling all taxa, thus providing a general relationship for the entire size spectrum of zooplankton. The biomass estimated from the body area spectrum of samples obtained around the Antarctic Peninsula agreed with other measurements of biomass in the region. The proposed conversion factor could provide for rapid estimates of biomass of net‐collected zooplankton from imaging devices or optical plankton counters.