Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Methods & Sampling
  • Data Processing Description
• Related Datasets
• Parameters
• Instruments
• Deployments
• Project Information
• Funding

CTD files were collected with a Seabird CTD and other attached sensors mounted on the ROV Doc Ricketts during dives D856 to D861 offshore of California from the surface to 3600 meters.

Oxygen saturation quality flags:

0 Data known to be bad, sensor malfunctioned
1 Questionable data contain some spikes but no known problems with the sensor.
2 Auto-loaded data have been automatically loaded but not checked by human eyes
3 Sensors appear to be operating as specified, checked by sensor technician, data looks reasonable
4 Data are good, Scientist has verified the validity of the data

Retrieved from MBARI database and formatted into columns.

BCO-DMO Data Manager Processing Notes:

* added a conventional header with dataset name, PI name, version date
* modified parameter names to conform with BCO-DMO naming conventions
* changed "None" to "nd" for no data value
* converted date and time to ISO timestamp
* approximate lat lons added from ctenophore observations for all but cruise D856

Data version 2 (2017-10-17) replaced version 1 (2016-12-22):
* more dive data added
* Some variable names changed. Parameter descriptions updated to reflect this.
* lat_approx, lon_approx extracted from the ctenophore dataset removed
* Latitude and Longitude added (from new version of ctd files).

Data version 3 (2019-10-08):
* Data from 2017 to 2019 added to data from data version 2 which was 2016 data.
* Data sorted by time
* Latitude and longitude rounded to 5 decimal places.

Data version 4 (2022-01-27):
* Data from 2020-2021 added
* Data sorted by time
* Latitude and longitude rounded to 5 decimal places.

The deep sea is more than 90 percent of the inhabitable space on Earth, yet life there is largely a mystery to science. Ctenophores, also known as comb jellies, are marine predators found in all oceans, inhabiting both deep and shallow seas. Although fragile and difficult to study, they are biologically important, in part because they appear to have been the first group of animals to split off from all other organisms during evolution, even before sponges and jellyfish. Over evolutionary time, many marine organisms have transitioned their home ranges to and from the deep sea despite the tremendous differences between these two habitats, including light, temperature, and hydrostatic pressure. Such habitat shifts required dramatic genetic and physiological changes to these animal lineages over time. The relationships between comb jelly species indicate that species from a variety of different families have evolved to live and thrive in the deep sea. This project will compare closely related deep and shallow species at biochemical, physiological and genetic levels to understand how these transitions came about. It will answer questions about the fundamental mechanisms of animal evolution and develop publicly available tools for analyzing genomic data sets. It will result in the training of cutting-edge techniques for two PhD students, a postdoc, two masters students, and numerous undergraduates. Public outreach involving biodiversity in the deep sea and gelatinous animals will help educate and inspire appreciation of marine life.

The main objective of this project is to understand evolution and diversification using cutting edge molecular analyses to investigate the deep-sea habitat as the generating force of novel biological adaptations. Ctenophore specimens will be collected using blue-water SCUBA in surface waters and remotely operated submarines in the deep sea to generate complementary physiological and genomic data across the full phylogenetic and functional diversity of ctenophores. With samples taken across a range of habitats from shallow tropical waters to temperate bathypelagic zone, the team will measure physiological capabilities and sequence transcriptomes and genomes. This project will develop novel algorithms to identify genes involved in depth adaptation and examine the genetic events that underlie physiological tolerances and adaptations to high hydrostatic pressures in the deep sea. To confirm the theory-based predictions of how gene sequence affects the properties of enzymes, proteins will be expressed and characterized in the lab. Collaborations between the students, postdocs and PIs involved in this project will substantially enhance an interdisciplinary workforce trained in both classical and cutting edge skills needed for contemporary biodiversity investigations.