Chlorophyll a concentration is widely used as a proxy to describe trends in phytoplankton biomass over spatial and temporal scales. The concentration of chlorophyll a in Storm Bay showed surprisingly little variation across the seasons. There was a gradient in concentration from site 1 to site 3, where chlorophyll a decreased slightly. It was highest and most variable at the inshore sites 1 and 9, and lowest at site 3, furthest out in the bay. There was no clear annually recurrent seasonal bloom, although data suggests higher values in spring and autumn (see later time series).

The phenotypic plasticity of habitat-forming seaweeds was investigated with a transplant experiment in which juvenile Ecklonia radiata and Phyllospora comosa were transplanted from NSW (warm conditions) to Tasmania (cool conditions) and monitored for four months. We used multiple performance indicators (growth, photosynthetic characteristics, pigment content, chemical composition, stable isotopes, nucleic acids) to assess the ecophysiology of seaweeds before and following transplantation between February 2012 and June 2012.