Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department has made an assessment of the sustainability of plankton levels in the North Atlantic.

As a contracting party to OSPAR, the regional seas convention covering the North-East Atlantic, the UK contributes to the assessment of plankton in the North-East Atlantic. Although the sustainability of plankton has not been specifically addressed by research at the North Atlantic scale, abundance and diversity of plankton in the North Atlantic is. These assessments indicate that there is variability in the plankton community, which is in accordance with the published scientific literature on plankton dynamics.