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 continously through the underway system of the RV Simon Stevin, imaged by Plankton Imager (Pi-10), predicted by in-house models and followed by manual validation.