Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Methods & Sampling
  • Data Processing Description
• Data Files
• Parameters
• Deployments
• Project Information
• Funding

Environmental and navigational data from the ship's monitoring systems, reported along the ship's track.

These data include temperature of the water and air, salinity, relative humidity, PAR, wind direction and speed, barometric pressure, fluorometry and short- and long-wave radiation collected at 1 minute intervals.

GCMD link: https://gcmd.nasa.gov/search/Metadata.do?entry=alongtrack_micronek&subse...

These data are part of the suite of measurements from the ship collected by Raytheon Polar Services, the ship operators of the Research Vessel Ice Breaker (RVIB) Nathaniel B. Palmer, distributed on CD to the departing Chief Scientist.

The Data Report provided by Raytheon at the conclusion of the cruise contains a list of all instruments and measurements made routinely by the ship's instruments.

This along track (JGOFS) data set was obtained primarily by applying calibrations to raw data and decimating to whole minute intervals. Several fields are derived measurements from more than an single raw input. For example, Course Made Good (cmg) and Speed Over Ground (sog) are calculated from gyro and GPS inputs. Cruises often used '9.99' or '9999' or NaN to indicate bad or missing data.  Not all bad data were flagged in this way however.

Pleuragramma antarcticum, the Antarctic silverfish, plays a key role in the trophic pyramid of the Antarctic coastal ecosystem, acting as food for larger fishes, flying and non-flying seabirds, pinnipeds, and whales. In turn, they are predators on coastal euphausiids, including both Euphausia superba and E. crystallorophias. Historically, Pleuragramma have been an important food source for Adélie Penguins of the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), but during the last decade Pleuragramma have disappeared from the Adélie diet. We suggest that Pleuragramma's absence from the diets of top predators is linked to the declining sea ice canopy, which serves as a nursery for eggs and larvae during the austral spring. The research will investigate four hydrographic regimes over the WAP continental shelf with the following features: (1) persistent gyral flows that act to retain locally spawned larvae, (2) spring sea ice that has declined in recent years (3) the prevalence of adult silverfish, and (4) the presence of breeding Adélie penguins whose diets vary in the proportions of silverfish consumed. The research will evaluate the importance of local reproduction versus larval advection, and the extent to which populations in the subregions of study are genetically distinct, via analysis of population structure, otolith microchemistry and molecular genetics of fish. The Pleuragramma data will be compared with penguin diet samples taken synoptically.