Phytoplankton
CalCOFI Phytoplankton (Venrick)
calcofi_phytoplanktonCalCOFICC0 · public domaindoi:10.6073/pasta/60edabfbfd85c623fce05822befaa071v2026.10.14ingested
- observations
- 155,553
- sampling events
- 409
- species
- 212
- depth
- surface only
Overview
Abundance and species composition of phytoplankton (385 taxonomic categories) in the California Current, 1996-2022, by inverted-microscope counts (E. Venrick). Samples from the near-surface “second depth” are pooled across stations into four regions (NE, SE, Alley, Offshore; Hayward & Venrick 1998) before counting, so the grain is cruise x region, not per-station. Source: EDI knb-lter-cce.254.4.
calcofi.org page ↗source ↗ingest notebook ↗record JSON JSON-LD
Coverage
1 variable
obs_bio profile · one value per taxon at a sampling event · 155,553 values · 1 variable
Species and taxa
- Oxytoxum 4094
- Bacillariophyceae diatoms 3700
- Nitzschia 3285
- Prorocentrum 3278
- Dinophysis 3272
- Chaetoceros 2871
- Protoperidinium 2456
- Tripos 2213
- Coccolithophyceae 2049
- Pterosperma 2045
- Pseudo-nitzschia 1234
- Nitzschia sicula 1233
- Gonyaulax 1227
- Corythodinium 1227
- Peridinium 1227
- Dinophyceae dinoflagellates 826
- Thalassionema nitzschioides 823
- Chaetoceros compressus 822
- Chaetoceros debilis 822
- Chaetoceros radicans 822
- Crystallolithus 821
- Nitzschia bicapitata 820
- Chaetoceros bacteriastroides 820
- Phaeocystis 819
- Actinoptychus 819
- Thalassiosira 818
- Actinocyclus 818
- Odontella 818
- Brachidinium 818
- Palaeophalacroma 574
- Glenodinium 413
- Leucocryptos marina 413
- Octactis speculum 413
- Cylindrotheca closterium 413
- Leptocylindrus 413
- Chaetoceros socialis 413
- Chaetoceros lorenzianus 413
- Dictyocha fibula 413
- Peridiniella danica 413
- Gephyrocapsa 413
- Helicosphaera 413
- Calcidiscus leptoporus 413
- Umbilicosphaera hulburtiana 413
- Gephyrocapsa huxleyi 413
- Fragilariopsis pseudonana 413
- Thalassionema frauenfeldii 413
- Ophiaster 412
- Rhizosoleniaceae 412
- Skeletonema costatum 412
- Corethron criophilum 412
In the vocabulary, not yet observed (1)
Names this dataset declares in dataset_taxon that carry no observation anywhere in the release, so the species catalog draws no page for them.
- Peridiniella catenata 258
Access
Every endpoint this dataset can be reached through, grouped by how you would use it. Each name is the link; the copy button beside it copies the address. Everything is in the release record and was answered when the release was cut.
Apps that read this dataset from the release. The icons after a name are the app’s lenses — the spatial grain it shows the data at.
Every way to have the bytes, by source. Nothing here asks you to register first.
Tables from the release (Parquet)
The release’s own tables, as the parquet objects it is frozen from — the same bytes every app and package below reads. A table this dataset shares with others holds every dataset’s rows, so filter on dataset_key; a partition holds only this dataset’s. since is the release whose rows these are: an unchanged table keeps its object.
CF netCDF
One self-describing file, for a tool that reads netCDF.
how far this file is CF
Fully CF: each row is an independent observation with its own time and position, which is a CF point collection. Rows are at the OCCURRENCE grain (event x taxon x life stage x depth), not the event grain, so a sample with many taxa contributes many points.
ERDDAP (erddap.calcofi.io)
One ERDDAP dataset per grain. Subset in the browser or query it from a script; for netCDF take the CF file above.
- observations
- one row per measurement — value, units and quality flag — joined to the sampling event it was taken on
- sampling events
- one row per cast, tow or transect: when, where and how it was sampled, with the effort that scales it
Legacy ids, still answering until 2026-12-04: calcofi_phytoplankton_old (replaced by calcofi_phytoplankton)
The same release, from a script or a browser SQL shell.
Packages
The whole release, pinned to a version, with the citation one call away.
con <- calcofi4r::cc_get_db()
calcofi4r::cc_cite("calcofi_phytoplankton")
con = calcofi4py.cc_get_db()
calcofi4py.cc_cite("calcofi_phytoplankton")
DuckDB, anywhere
No CalCOFI package needed: each table above is a plain parquet object, readable by any DuckDB (or Arrow, pandas, Spark) from its URL. The path carries a content hash — a table whose rows did not change between releases keeps the same object, so nothing unchanged is stored or downloaded twice. Swap in any table above; one shared with other datasets needs WHERE dataset_key = 'calcofi_phytoplankton'. Every object of every release is listed in db-schema.
SELECT *
FROM read_parquet('https://storage.googleapis.com/calcofi-db/ducklake/tables/obs/dataset_key=calcofi_phytoplankton/d7d0e14051f21a095f92caf5/data_0.parquet')
LIMIT 100;
db-query, in the browser
__TBL:obs__ is db-query’s name for the pinned release’s obs object — the hashed path above, resolved for you — so the same SQL keeps working when a release changes the object.
-- calcofi_phytoplankton in the CalCOFI release v2026.10.14
SELECT *
FROM __TBL:obs__
WHERE dataset_key = 'calcofi_phytoplankton'
LIMIT 100;
Records about the data, in the standards each portal harvests.
Where this dataset is registered outside calcofi.io: each portal’s role, what it is for, the dataset’s status there and the identifier it is known by. The policy — which portal is the archive of record and why — is in Portals.
Policy Archive of record: CCE-LTER's EDI package knb-lter-cce.254.4, the ingest's source — never republished by CalCOFI. OBIS: planned (Darwin Core Archive built and staged each release; region-pooled events carry no date, so OBIS indexing is limited).
Everything here is open — nothing on calcofi.io asks you to register first. If this dataset ends up in something you build or publish, register your use so it can be credited and linked back; to hear when a release changes it, stay informed. Questions: data@calcofi.io.
Cite
This dataset's own citation. What to cite, and how, is a chapter of the docs book.
CalCOFI - Scripps Institution of Oceanography, California Current Ecosystem LTER, and E. Venrick. 2023. Temporal and spatial changes of the abundance and species composition of phytoplankton in the California Current from samples collected aboard CalCOFI cruises from summer 1996 through 2022. ver 4. Environmental Data Initiative. https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/60edabfbfd85c623fce05822befaa071
License: CC0-1.0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/60edabfbfd85c623fce05822befaa071
BibTeX
@misc{calcofi_phytoplankton,
title = {CalCOFI Phytoplankton (Venrick)},
howpublished = {CalCOFI - Scripps Institution of Oceanography, California Current Ecosystem LTER, and E. Venrick. 2023. Temporal and spatial changes of the abundance and species composition of phytoplankton in the California Current from samples collected aboard CalCOFI cruises from summer 1996 through 2022. ver 4. Environmental Data Initiative. https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/60edabfbfd85c623fce05822befaa071},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.6073/pasta/60edabfbfd85c623fce05822befaa071},
url = {https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/60edabfbfd85c623fce05822befaa071},
note = {License: CC0-1.0}
}
…and the release it came from
CalCOFI (2026). CalCOFI Integrated Database, release v2026.10.14 [Data set]. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA Fisheries, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife. https://calcofi.io/db-schema/?v=v2026.10.14
BibTeX
@misc{calcofi_release_v2026_10_14,
title = {CalCOFI Integrated Database, release v2026.10.14},
author = {CalCOFI},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA Fisheries, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife},
url = {https://calcofi.io/db-schema/?v=v2026.10.14}
}
Source files
The original inputs the ingest notebook read, archived by the ingest to the public files bucket — 8 files, 1.5 MB.
- abund_1996_2012.csv422 KB2026-07-29
- abund_1996_2012.xlsx422 KB2026-07-29
- abund_2012_2018.csv192 KB2026-07-29
- abund_2012_2018.xlsx192 KB2026-07-29
- abund_2019_2022.csv119 KB2026-07-29
- abund_2019_2022.xlsx119 KB2026-07-29
- definitions.csv35.3 KB2026-07-29
- definitions.xlsx35.3 KB2026-07-29