Microplankton is a small, single-celled planktonic organisms in a size range 20 - 200 microns.
All samples were taken from the water column.

Methodology adopted by Department of Ecology IOPAS
(Procedures and equipment)
Phytoplankton (microplankton) is collected with the use of perplex glass bottle of 5dm3 volume with closing device (Niskin Bottle or similar design). Samples are collected from the depths delimited after the light measurement (usually at surface, 50%, 10% and 1% of surface irradiance), in the absence of light meter the samples are collected from 0, 2, 5,10 and 50m depth. Water sample onboard is placed into 250cm3 jar, fixed with Lugol solutiona and 3% formaldehyde. Samples are analysed in the lab under the inverted microscope, after the sedimentation in 1ml chambers. Phytoplankton is counted under the 200x magnitude , and as minimum 1000 objects are identified and counted from each sample.