Notes: Abstract It is indeed my great honor to receive the Okada Prize (1983) for my studies on the population dynamics and production of inshore marine copepods. This article summarizes the lecture I gave under the above title. It has long been postulated that there is some mechanism whereby a species can repopulate after its disappearance from the plankton, since the appearance of many temperature marine copepods clearly occurs on a seasonal basis. During the last decade, evidence of resting egg production has been found for more than 20 species belonging to Temoridae, Centropagidae, Pontellidae, Acartiidae and Tortanidae. In the Inland Sea of Japan, a summer-fall copepodTortanus forcipatus lays diapause (obligatory resting) eggs in the fall, which overwinter in the sediment on the sea floor until the following summer when water temperature reachesca. 15°C. On the other hand, in Onagawa Bay,Acartia clausi is perennial and produces only subitaneous eggs, many of which, however, sink to the bottom and undergo quiescence (facultative resting eggs) due to adverse environmental conditions (e.g. low temperature, deoxygenation, darkness). There are a large quantity (0.5–2.0×106 eggs m−2) ofA. clausi resting eggs in the sediments of Onagawa Bay, which may play an important role in maintaining a more constant planktonic population. The parameters of population dynamics,i.e. the rates of egg production, recruitment and mortality, have been analyzed forA. clausi in Onagawa Bay, by an integration of field and laboratory studies. Recruitment into the planktonic population older than NIII only accounts for 10–20% of egg production. This apparent loss of eggs, which coincides with the benthic resting phase, may be a characteristic feature of the population dynamics of this species. Stage-specific mortality is generally similar in most of the stages, although CI and CVI suffer more severe mortality, possibly as a result of great morphological change in the former stage and heavy predations in the latter. The seasonal change in daily production byA. clausi has also been investigated, its annual production being 2.45 gC m−2. Daily production and biomass (P:B) ratios increase linearly with temperature. Estimated values of production for other inshore marine copepods are reviewed in relation to P:B ratios and the ratio between secondary and primary production.

Notes: Abstract Standing stocks and production rates of phytoplankton and planktonic copepods were investigated at 15 stations in the Inland Sea of Japan during four cruises in October–November 1979, January, April and June 1980. The overall mean of phytoplankton biomass was relatively constant during the study period, ranging from 2.3 mg chl.a m−3 in April to 3.6 mg chl.a m−3 in October–November. Primary production was low in January (mean: 90 mg C m−2 d−1), but higher than 375 mg C m−2 d−1 on the other occasions. Integrated annual primary production was 122 g C m−2 yr−1. In terms of carbon weight,Paracalanus parvus was the most important copepod species. The variation of the mean copepod biomass (range: 7.6 mg C m−3 in April to 20.2 mg C m−3 in June) was smaller than that of copepod production, which was estimated by the Ikeda-Motoda's physiological method. Copepod producion was low in cold seasons (0.6 and 0.9 mg C m−3 d−1 in January and April, respectively), and increased, following the elevation of primary production, to 4.9 mg C m−3 d−1 in June. Annual copepod production was 33.7 g C m−2 yr−1, of which herbivore (secondary) production was 26.4 g C m−2 yr−1 (21.7% of primary production). The ratios of pelagic planktivorous fish catch and total fish catch to the primary production were 0.82 and 1.8%, respectively, indicating very high efficiency in exploiting fishery resources in the Inland Sea of Japan.