The West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is experiencing one of the most rapid climate change signals on Earth and recent reports have documented a change in the phytoplankton biomass in the WAP over the last three decades. These reports utilized monthly averaged decadal satellite climatologies. To complement that satellite based effort, we use the 18-year LTER time series collected at Palmer Station to study seasonal and inter-annual variability in the phytoplankton biomass and community composition. There has been a high degree of inter-annual variability in chlorophyll at Palmer Station since the start of the PAL LTER program in 1991. The magnitude of the inter- annual variability seems to be greater than that of the intra-seasonal variability at this site. Surface chlorophyll has a positive correlation with chlorophyll at depth therefore we confine this analyses for surface pigment. We use pigments to identify the relative abundance of the dominant phytoplankton taxa at Palmer. Diatoms and cryptophytes were the dominant phytoplankton taxa explaining 62% and 38% of the chlorophyll variance respectively. Coccolithophores were not a dominant species in the Palmer time series. The wind conditions were significantly negatively correlated to chlorophyll concentration suggesting that water column stabilization during periods of quiescent wind were critical to allowing phytoplankton at Palmer to bloom.