Dr. Tamar Zohary's research

Phytoplankton monitoring (ie regular surveillance) has been conducted regularly and systematically since 1969. Follow-up was done by collecting water samples from different depths in the center of the lake once a week or two, preserving the samples, microscopically looking at water creatures, identifying the different species, and counting the number of items from each species. In recent years, we have also measured and document the distribution of algae sizes. This process has been done for the past five decades. This monitoring led to the creation of a detailed database on the time and depth distribution of phytoplankton species in the Sea of Galilee.

At the same time, Tamar is responsible for the microbial culture collection in the Sea of Galilee Research Laboratory, and for an internet catalog of the microscopic algae species in the Sea of Galilee. The catalog contains images of nearly 100 species and subspecies of algae found in the Sea of Galilee.