The St Helena Bay Monitoring Line, which now falls under the Integrated Ecosystem Programme: Southern Benguela, was conducted on the Algoa Voyage 193, 11 to 15 January 2013. The St Helena Bay Monitoring Line was initiated as a BENEFIT-driven project on "shipboard monitoring" which linked with similar lines run in Namibia and Angola. The aims are to obtain seasonal and interannual information on the hydrology and productivity of the area. Data on harmful algal blooms, low oxygen water and intrusions of Agulhas Bank water along the west coast will also be collected. A long-term, multi-decadel time-series (from 1951 onward) of information already exists for this important region and has continued in the form of the IEP:SB to detect long-term changes in the hydrology and the plankton, which are important for the detection of regime shifts.