Northwest European shelf seas - Phytoplankton pigments - 2010 to 2019

These data contain concentrations in micrograms per litre (ug/L) of the individual accessory pigments of phytoplankton measured by High Pressure Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). Pigment samples were taken primarily on Cefas fisheries and SmartBuoy cruises in the North Sea and Celtic Seas, and sent to DHI laboratory in Denmark for HPLC analysis. Data was then sent back to Cefas and matched with metadata and quality controlled. Chlorophyll concentrations from this dataset have a variety of uses: for assessment of concentrations for purposes such as eutrophication assessments, validation of remote sensing derived chlorophyll estimates, as a proxy for phytoplankton biomass, or to calibrate fluorometers. Pigment concentrations can be applied like a fingerprint to derive phytoplankton functional types and give information about the phytoplankton community.