The main purpose of this study was to assess the usefulness of the laser optical plankton counter (LOPC) as a Calanus finmarchicus monitoring tool in the NE Norwegian Sea in winter. To test this, a multinet and an LOPC were used simultaneously to sample overwintering copepods in the Lofoten basin in January 2007. Additional data from an LOPC laboratory experiment were also analyzed to help the interpretation of the field data. Both the laboratory data and the field data indicated that the presence of particles other than zooplankton generally contaminated the zooplankton signal in the LOPC data. However, reliable abundance estimates could be made from the LOPC data by choosing an appropriate size range in the LOPC size distribution. This size range was determined by comparing LOPC abundance estimates from systematically varying size ranges to multinet zooplankton abundance data. The average difference was smallest for a size range of about 900-1500 lm. As C. finmarchicus, stages IV and V, was by far the most abundant species in the NE Norwegian Sea, abundance estimates from the LOPC in this size range were in practice estimates of C. finmarchicus abundance, making the LOPC suitable as a tool for providing high resolution winter data in the NE Norwegian Sea.

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