Continuous Plankton Recorder

There's many organisms that are very charismatic and people care about, but actually plankton are the life of the oceans, they're the life of this planet, and we should be understanding more about them.

That's Dr Claire Ostall, marine biogeochemist at the Marine Biological Association and the chair of the Global Alliance of Continuous Plankton Recorder Surveys.

And Anna Turns, an environmental journalist and senior environment editor for The Conversation.

I am very worried about a world without plankton.

Claire, you spend a lot of time looking at what the rest of us can't see in the ocean.

Does that mean you'd be the first to sound the alarm about my vanishing act?

Well, yes, the continuous plankton recorder or CPR would come up empty.

So our team of analysts who spent hours counting and IDing all of those plankton would be very shocked indeed.