• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.327-337
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• 2007

Plankton communities have close relationships with environmental changes in water columns. Thus, the use of plankton as a biological tool for assessing the marine ecosystem health may be effective. Major issue regarding coastal pollution has been usually recognized as phytoplankton blooms or red tides caused by the eutrophication, an increase in concentration of inorganic nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. However, in order to understand the effects of the overall pollution on marine ecosystem, the organic pollutants as well as the inorganic nutrients should be also considered. For understanding the effects of the organic pollution, among the planktonic organisms, heterotrophic bacteria, heterotrophic flagellates and ciliates should be investigated. Generally, there are three approaches for assessing the marine ecosystem health using the plankton taxa or plankton communities. The first one is a community-based approach such as diversity index and chlorophyll a concentration which are common in analysis of the plankton communities. The second is an indiviual-based approach which is to monitor the pollution indicative species. This approach needs one's ability to identify the plankton to species level. The last approach is a bioassay of toxicity, which can be applied to the plankton. A pilot study in Masan Bay was conducted to assess the effects of the inorganic and organic pollution. In this article, a new approach using plankton communities was tentatively presented as a biological tool for assessing the ecosystem health of Masan Bay.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.389-397
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• 2010

The in vitro toxicities of three crude oils of the Hebei Spirit were examined on laboratory grown plankton, with a focus on the effects of a dispersant. The specific growth rate of phytoplankton and the mortalities of two zooplankton were measured in response to exposure to various concentrations of water accommodated oil, dispersant or both. The effects of the oils varied among the plankton, but were generally low within the range of the oil concentrations used, with little difference in toxicity among the three oils. Such low toxicity appeared to be associated with weathering of the crude oils. Exposure to the dispersant, however, dramatically increased the mortality of zooplankton, with complete inhibition of phytoplankton growth. No synergistic toxic effect was observed with the crude oil and dispersant combination. A better decision making process could be crafted for future application of dispersant in the event of an oil spill in Korean waters to better protect the marine plankton community from the excessive use of dispersant.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.35-41
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• 2018

The analysis of plankton species distribution in sea or fresh water is very important in preserving marine ecosystem health. Since manual analysis is infeasible, many automatic approaches were proposed. They usually use images from in situ towed underwater imaging sensor or specially designed, lab mounted microscopic imaging system. Normally they assume that only single plankton is present in an image so that, if there is a clumping among multiple plankton of same species (homogeneous clumping) or if there are multiple plankton of different species scattered in an image (heterogeneous interspersion), they have a difficulty in recognition. In this work, we propose a deep learning based method that can detect and recognize individual plankton in images with homogeneous clumping, heterogeneous interspersion, or combination of both.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.11 no.8
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• pp.793-800
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• 2002

Butyltin (BT) compounds were measured in seawater, sediment, sediment core, settling solids, and plankton from Gwangyang Bay in 2001, Tributyltin (TBT) was detected in seawater from 1 out of the 7 seawater sampling sites and in sediment from 18 out of the 35 sediment sampling sites. The highest concentration of TBT was found in the sediment from the site near Yeosu Harbor (53 ng Sn/g dry wt), acting as the point source for TBT The mean concentrations of TBT were in the order of plankton> settling solids> sediment. The degradation indexes ([DBT]+[MBT]/[TBT]) for the plankton were less than 1, indicating the possibility of recent inputs of TBT. The indexes for the sediment and settling solids ranged from 1.14 to 8.73. The composition of the BT compounds found in the settling solids was similar to that found in the sediment. The vertical profile of the total BT compounds in the sediment was characterized by an abrupt decline from the surface. However, no butyltin compounds appeared below a depth of 10 cm, corresponding to the 1980s. Accordingly, the current results demonstrated that the levels of all butyltin species in the environment of Gwangyang Bay were relatively lower than those in other polluted coastal areas. The vertical profile also suggested a fairly recent history for the down-core.

• 한국해양학회지
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• v.2 no.1_2
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• pp.13-23
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• 1967

Seasonal changes in the primary production of surface water in Suyong Bay, Pusan, were measured using a light-dark bottle method. Gross photosynthesis followed a distinct seasonal change with highest levels in spring and fall. Respiration of plankton community showed its maximum only in the late summer and early fall. Net photosynthesis of plankton community is considerably variable throughout year, but followed a seasonal change similar to gross photosynthesis. Seasonal changes in temperature and salinity are related to the seasonal change in plankton metabolism.

• Journal of Species Research
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.365-372
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• 2019

We have conducted faunistic study of sea lice collected from marine plankton samples of western and southern coasts of Korea. These specimens were identified as Caligus undulatus Shen and Li, 1959, belonging to family Caligidae and order Siphonostomatoida with worldwide distribution. The range extension of C. undulatus is reported in addition to the previously known distributional range from the Northwest Pacific (China, Japan, and Korea), India, Brazil, and Mexico. This species can be distinguished from all previous reports with characteristics such as overall body proportions of both sexes, structure details of mouth appendages, armature of legs, and some variation in body size. The distributional range of C. undulatus is now given with its northern and south hemisphere limit being 40 to $10^{\circ}N$ in the Indo-Pacific and $30^{\circ}S$ in the Southwest Atlantic. This is the first record of its female occurring in Korea.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• v.1
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• pp.499-499
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• 2006

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.57-65
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• 2006

Various marine plankton were observed in the ballast water of vessels entering Incheon and Busan harbors. The ballast water of which age ranged from 2 to 54 days originated from the coastal waters of New Zealand, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and Pakistan, and from the Pacific Ocean. The total number of marine plankton taxa in 9 ballast tanks of different ships was 170: 90 phytoplankton, 24 protozoa and 56 zooplankton. The most diverse taxonomic groups were diatoms in phytoplankton, ciliates in protozoa and copepods in zooplankton. Classifying the specimens by size, above 50% of the number species of phytoplankton belonged to the size range between 50 and 150 Un. Protozoa and metazooplankton were found frequently in the size range between 50 and $120{\mu}m$ and 500 and $1,000{\mu}m$, respectively. The relationship between the species number and the age of ballast water was not significant. This is because of difference of filtration amounts derived from discordance of collecting samples. Among plankton observed in ballast water, some harmful algae and non-indigenous aquatic species were identified. Therefore, we need to investigate whether these species can inhabit in Korean coastal waters in further study.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.125-132
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• 2010

In order to assess the effect of pollution on marine ecosystem, we examined the plankton health assessment at 16 stations during summer season in Jinhae Bay. The organic and inorganic pollutant sources (dissolved organic carbon; DOC, chemical oxygen demand; COD and Chlorophyll a; Chl.a), including planktonic orangism such as enterobacteria Escherichia coli, heterotrophic bacteria (HB), autotrophic nano-flagellates (ANF), heterotrophic nano flagellates (HNF), ciliate and harmful algal bloom species (HABs) were used to characterize marine ecosystem health assessment. Of these, we tentatively selected those items Chl.a, HABs, HB and E. coli for plankton health index (PHI). Also, the scoring criteria for each metric were based on a statistical analysis and then, the grades are rated on four levels. As a result, the ecological assessment of these data reveals that PHI in Jinhae Bay is rated as "Good or fair" for overall conditions. The present study suggests that the PHI might be considered as one of important management tool to assess marine ecosystem health of Jinhae Bay.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.223-231
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• 2014

In order to prevent the spread of non-indigenous aquatic species through the ballast water in commercial ships, International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted in 2004 the International Convention for Control and Management of Ship's Ballast Water and Sediments. The Convention mandates treatment of ballast water for most transoceanic voyages and its confirmation of treatment is made with plankton live/dead assay. Fluorescein diacetate assay (FDA), which produces bright green light for live phytoplankton, has been a de facto standard method to determine the survival of marine plankton, but its staining efficacy has been in dispute. In the present study, we examined the limitation of FDA, and compared its efficacy with Neutral red (NR) staining, another promising assay and widely used especially for zooplankton mortality. For all phytoplankton species studied in the present study, except Ditylum brightwellii, the staining efficiency was <50% with FDA. The green FDA fluorescence interfered with phytoplankton autofluorescence in most samples. In contrast, NR assay stained over 90% of both phytoplankton and zooplankton species tested in this study. FDA assay also showed that green FDA fluorescence rapidly faded when phytoplankton cells were exposed to microscope light. Both FDA and NR assay were negative on formalin-killed individuals of both phytoplankton and zooplankton species. Our results suggest that NR assay is more effective for determining the survival of marine plankton and can be applied to test the efficacy of ballast water treatment.