Collecting today for tomorrow's technology

We hold one of the oldest, most large scale sample archives in the world. Samples collected by the CPR Survey since 1958 are stored and carefully curated, providing a bank of samples available for future analysis using new and innovative methodologies.

During routine plankton analysis, every other sample on a tow is processed by our team of specialist analysts, before being archived.

The remaining 50% of the tow is not analysed but archived immediately, resulting in a library of samples available for further/alternative analysis.

The archive is home to all our samples from routine North Atlantic, South Atlantic and North Pacific tows, in addition to one-off cruises, e.g. circumnavigation of the Arctic collected in 2012.