Following the first several years of the BATS project it was deemed necessary by the JGOFS steering committee and BATS PI's to conduct validation cruises in the vicinity of the nominal BATS site to better understand the mesoscale and larger scale variability of the region. In particular, a focus of the BVAL cruises was to assess the spatial scale representation of the BATS and Hydrostation ‘S’ programs. Initial focus of the BVAL cruises was to investigate mesoscale variability and meridional gradients of the local region. Later, cruises focused on specific mesoscale eddies (e.g., McGillicuddy et al., 1998; McGillicuddy et al., 1999) and effects of tropical cyclones through the local region. In the year 2000 it was deemed more important to document the larger scale changes in the North Atlantic Subtropical gyre so BVAL cruises established a transect line from ~ 35N to 19N (Bermuda to Puerto Rico) very similar to the WOCE A22 repeat hydrography line (Johnson et al., 2020). These annual Bermuda to Puerto Rico transects have been run since 2000 and target stations at every one degree of latitude and typically have been conducted in September/October of each year to capture maximal heat content in the upper ocean. However, since this timeframe coincides with high tropical cyclone activity the cruises were reluctantly (as of 2022) moved to begin in June/July of each year for safety and operational reasons. In the pentad prior to 2022 every BVAL cruise was significantly impacted by multiple tropical cyclones. Additionally, some BVAL cruises are transects from the US east coast to Bermuda and are opportunistic cruises leveraging times when the BIOS resident vessel (R/V Weatherbird II or R/V Atlantic Explorer) is in transit for other research cruises or ship yard visits. Parameters presented are the same as provided in the standard BATS datasets.
