This PhD utilizes ZooScan to analyze plankton community composition and abundance in the Belgian part of the North Sea, processing samples to study the impacts of marine heatwaves. By integrating these data with physical climate variables, we assess how heatwaves influence plankton phenology and dominance shifts. The data produced here, is sampled by vertical WP2 net tows, samples scanned with ZooScanner and identification on the EcoTaxa platform, followed by manual validation.