The North Arabian Sea Environment and Ecosystem Research (NASEER) is Pakistan's JGOFS-related program in oceanography, funded by the United States' Office of Naval Research (ONR).
Three different vessels were chartered for the research program. The first two cruises, NASEER 1 (January 9 to 23, 1992) and NASEER 2 (August 11 to 25, 1992), were done aboard the S/V Aghyar. The third cruise, NASEER 3 (March 13 to 22, 1993), was conducted aboard S/V Mangan and the last two cruises, NASEER 4 (May 11 to 21, 1994) and NASEER 5 (December 18 to 28, 1994), were conducted aboard the naval survey vessel Behr Paima.
The zooplankton sampling was carried out using 60 cm Bongo nets on all five cruises. Nets of mesh aperture 335 um were used for NASEER 1, NASEER 2 and NASEER 3, while 150 um mesh nets were used for NASEER 4 and NASEER 5. A digital flowmeter (HYDROBIOS, 0.3 m rev-1) was mounted at the mouth of the net to measure water flow entering the nets. The nets were towed in a circular path, at the speed of 2 to 3 knots for 10 minutes, to obtain surface samples (0 to 5 m). The samples were washed in seawater and stored in 10% neutral formalin in plastic jars. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were carried out ashore at the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) laboratory, Karachi, Pakistan.
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