Shaker G. Ajeel

Department of Marine Biology, Marine Science Centre, University of Basrah, Iraq
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Marine Science, 2017, Vol. 7, No. 8   doi: 10.5376/ijms.2017.07.0008
Received: 14 Feb., 2017    Accepted: 09 Mar., 2017    Published: 19 Mar., 2017

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Ajeel S.G., 2017, Zooplankton of Iraqi marine water north west Arabian Gulf, International Journal of Marine Science, 7(8): 67-75 (doi: 10.5376/ijms.2017.07.0008)

Samples were collected from seven stations in Iraqi marine water at North west Arabian Gulf by a plankton net (0.120 mm mesh-size and 40 cm mouth aperture) during July 2009 and March 2010. The population density of zooplankton ranged between 185 ind./m³ during March 2010 to 32856 ind./m³ during July 2009 at St. 3 (Al-Musab). Crustaceans were the dominant which constitute 76.4% of the total zooplankton in study area. Copepoda constitute (76%), Bivalve (9%), Rotifera (6%), Cirripede larvae and Appendicularia (2%) of the total zooplankton. The average biomass of zooplankton estimated as wet weight 387.7 mg/m³, dry weight 18.7 mg/m³, displacement volume 0.5 ml/ m³ and standing crop 33.0 mg C/ m³ in study area.

Zooplankton; Density; Biomass; NW Arabian Gulf