In situ filtering rate variability in egg and larval surveys off the Pacific coast of Japan: Do plankton nets clog or over-filter in the sea?

- In situ filtering rate variability was examined for vertical tows of plankton nets.
- The filtering rate was highly variable at the individual level.
- The median values approximated the theoretical value of 1.0 over large scales.
- The filtering rate is influenced by small-scale variability of ocean conditions.

In situ filtering rate variability was examined for vertical tows of plankton nets in egg and larval surveys off the Pacific coast of Japan, based on a data set pooled over large spatial and temporal scales (76,444 sampling tows from 1978 to 2013). The filtering rate showed unimodal distributions and was highly variable for the four net types: Long NORPAC (LNP), NORPAC (NOR), Maru-toku B (MTB), and Maru-naka (MNK). Despite the high variability at the individual tow level, the median values of the filtering rate for the overall data approximated the theoretical value of 1.0, in particular, for LNP, although the median values differed among the net types. For LNP, the differences in the median values among the 26 years, the 12 months, and the 4 regions were small relative to the overall variability at the individual level. The present study quantified the extent of underestimation/overestimation when the theoretical value of 1.0 is used due to the lack of the actual filtering rate data. The filtering rate was almost on a balance of resistance effect of net and cod-end, clogging effect of collected organisms, and over-inflow effect of currents over large scales. The present analysis implies that the filtering rate is mainly influenced by small-scale transient variability of ocean conditions such as wind speed, current intensity, rolling, turbulence, and mixing rather than large-scale variability related to climate regime, seasonality, or water masses. The results will allow the utilization of historical data lacking flow-meter data for large-scale comparative analyses.