Notice of RetractionInvestigation of Plankton in Ballast Water of Two Chinese Domestic Voyages

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

The presenting author of this paper has the option to appeal this decision by contacting TPII@ieee.org.

Investigation of plankton in ballast water in two Chinese domestic voyages has been carried out during April 2009. One voyage is from Dalian to Haikou during April 11 to 15, and the other return voyage is from Haikou to Dalian during April 11 to 22. The decrease trend of plankton abundance and biomass were detected during two voyages, and in the route of Haikou to Dalian the decrease of plankton were more sharply. Causing red tide and species invasion were seemed could be neglected in these domestic voyages. However, the potential destroy of ecological balance on plankton species composition were should be emphasis. The nutrition factors especially nitrate and ammonium contents have significant correlation with Chla, and phosphates contents also significant correlated with phytoplankton biomass, which indicated that the nitrogen and phosphorus were also key limiting nutrition factors in ballast water tank.