At present time, there is a lack of knowledge on the interannual climate-related variability of zooplankton communities of the tropical Atlantic, central Mediterranean Sea, Caspian Sea, and Aral Sea, due to the absence of appropriate databases. In the mid latitudes, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is the dominant mode of atmospheric fluctuations over eastern North America, the northern Atlantic Ocean and Europe. Therefore, one of the issues that need to be addressed through data synthesis is the evaluation of interannual patterns in species abundance and species diversity over these regions in regard to the NAO. The database has been used to investigate the ecological role of the NAO in interannual variations of mesozooplankton abundance and biomass along the zonal array of the NAO influence.Basic approach to the proposed research involved: (1) development of co-operation between experts and data holders in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, UK, and USA to rescue and compile the oceanographic data sets and release them on CD-ROM, (2) organization and compilation of a database based on FSU cruises to the above regions, (3) analysis of the basin-scale interannual variability of the zooplankton species abundance, biomass, and species diversity.

Core international projects dealing with the ocean, as well as the UNEP Biodiversity and Climate Change Program, have emphasised an urgent need for information on the impact of climate change on species diversity and on the development of efforts to deal with this impact.In order to assess this impact, a global database of historical plankton community composition was needed. A team of scientists from IBSS and MSRC developed a plankton database of oceanographic stations sampled during the Former Soviet Union (FSU) expeditions to the World Ocean. This database contains over 50 expeditions to the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, and the Indian Ocean.The Database was created with the assistance of the following institutions: Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas, Ukrainain National Academy of Sciences, Sevastopol, Ukraine Marine Hydrophysical Institute, Ukrainain National Academy of Sciences, Sevastopol, Ukraine Caspian Biological Station, Institute of Zoology of Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences, Baku, Azerbaijan Institute of Zoology and NGO "Tethys", Almaty, Kazakhstan Marine Sciences Research Center, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, USA Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Plymouth, United KingdomThe database was published on CD and was online accessible from the GLOBEC web page at http://www.globec.org/index.php?id=245 until 2009. This is the online version as persistently archived in 2008 by Pangaea following the GLOBEC data policy.The CD 2007 version contains data from 41 expeditions to the Atlantic Ocean and over 30 expeditions to the enclosed seas of the Atlantic Ocean, including over 30 years of sampling in the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, and 14 expeditions to the Indian Ocean.