8A Drake Passage/ Western Scotia Sea 



Sayed Z. El-Sayed 



and 



Eileen E. Hofmann 



Department of Oceanography 

 Texas A&M University 

 College Station, Texas 



In recent years, several countries have shown increasing interest in 

 exploiting the Southern Ocean's living resources. If the harvest of these 

 resources is to be properly managed, we first need an accurate assessment 

 of the biological productivity in the Southern Ocean. Without adequate 

 synoptic data, it is difficult to arrive at realistic estimates of phytoplankton 

 abundance and to develop models of phytoplankton dynamics which will 

 successfully predict trophic interactions. Although a great deal of useful 

 information has been obtained on the Southern Ocean's standing crop and 

 primary production during the past 25 years, these estimates are based 

 largely on point sources (i.e., stations) and were taken onboard 

 oceanographic ships at different seasons and often in different years 

 (El-Sayed, 1967). As a result, overall estimates reflect broad temporal and 

 spatial variability in the phytoplankton standing crop and primary 

 production. 



For large and difficult-to-explore areas such as the Southern Ocean, the 

 CZCS, combined with ground-truth data, makes it possible to arrive at an 

 accurate estimate of phytoplankton biomass and possibly of primary 

 productivity. The following case study documents efforts to obtain such 

 estimates with the CZCS. 



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