Fig. 1

Distribution of sampling stations over three decades in the Norwegian, Greenland and Iceland Seas (black dots). The seasonal transects (orange lines) in the Open Ocean Monitoring Survey, are shown for Svinøy – NW (a), Fugløya – Bjørnøya (b) and Bjørnøya – W (c). Total number of stations visited (n) is summarized for each decade. Selected stations sampled for DOW (yellow circles) and POC, PN (yellow stars) in 1993, are also shown (profiles shown in Figs. 7, 8).