Quadra Island Plankton Diversity

Starting in 2020, the Hakai Institute embarked on a long-term project to examine the plankton living in the nearshore waters around Quadra Island, British Columbia. Through a series of plankton samples collected each week, our "biomarathon" team is taking a deep dive into the plankton at a handful of locations close to our Quadra Island Ecological Observatory to examine what species are living in these waters, and how the makeup of the plankton community changes over time.

Samples are taken from each of these organisms for DNA barcoding to support identifications and to contribute to the growing global DNA library. All samples in this project have a COI DNA sequence that is publicly accessible on the Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD), Hakai's DNA catalogue of choice.

The goal of this iNaturalist project is to celebrate and showcase this usually unseen diversity, to recruit help with the taxonomic puzzles that we may encounter along the way, and to add these often less represented organisms and life stages to the iNaturalist database. less ↑