Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Methods & Sampling
  • Data Processing Description
  • BCO-DMO Processing Description
  • Problem Description
• Data Files
• Supplemental Files
• Related Publications
• Parameters
• Instruments
• Deployments
• Project Information
• Funding

This dataset will be updated to include additional data from deployments from the winter of 2022 and winter of 2023.

Location description: Six cross-shelf transects in the northern California Current, ranging from near the Oregon-California border (42.5°N) to southern Washington (47.1°N). Maximum depth of instrument is 100m or within 2-5m of the seafloor. A list of more detailed information about the individual transects is included (See Supplemental Files). 

ISIIS-3 was deployed at night from the research vessel, and towed the length of the transects in an undulating manner at 2.5 m/s (vessel speed 5 kts), undulating between 1m and 100m depth, or within 2m of the seafloor in waters shallower than 100m depth. A total of six transects were sampled per cruise, with the longest transects split into inshore and offshore portions sampled over two nights. Each transect was sampled in the “tow-yo” fashion throughout the deployment of the instrument. ISIIS-3 was terminated to a fiber optic winch. Data were streamed to the shipboard ISIIS-3 computer in real time. A program manager (JADE, https://sixclear.com/jade/) took the input data streams from both cameras, each sensor, and GPS data from the ship, and wrote into individual millisecond time-stamped files. Data were stored on the shipboard computer’s 16TB internal drives, then copied on to individual 6TB external drives in duplicate for each camera. Individual files were written for the CTD, GPS stream, voltage-based sensor readings (pH, dissolved oxygen, PAR), altimeter, and flowmeter, and files were written on the shipboard ISIIS-3 computer. 

See Schmid et al. (2023, doi:10.3389/fmars.2023.1187771) for more information on ISIIS-3 imager and deployments on these research cruises. 

Sensor data were written by individual publishers and millisecond time stamped.  A Python script  merge_environmental.py (Schmid et al., 2023, DOI: 10.5281/ZENODO.7739010) was used to merge these individual files into a final dataset based on the millisecond time stamps associated with each observation, creating a cohesive dataset over the time period sampled. Conversion factors and calibrations were applied to pH, oxygen, and irradiance voltage readings to yield final values, and chlorophyll-a was calculated using manufacturer conversions and calibration values. Conversion factors and calibrations were applied in R. 

Histograms of sensor data values were used to determine extreme values to flag as potential outliers. 

* Data tables from submitted files "s22_ISIIS3_enviro.csv" and "s23_ISIIS3_enviro.csv" were imported into the BCO-DMO data system for this dataset and concatenated. Values "NA" were imported as missing data values. 
** In the BCO-DMO data system missing data identifiers are displayed according to the format of data you access. For example, in csv files it will be blank (null) values. In Matlab .mat files it will be NaN values. When viewing data online at BCO-DMO, the missing value will be shown as blank (null) values.

* ISO DateTime with timezone (UTC) column added in ISO 8601 format (converted from local "US/Pacific" timestamp in PST/PDT time zone.

* Column "Cruise_ID" added.

* Lat,lon rounded to 5 decimal places as decided with data submitter. pH PAR and oxygen also rounded to 5 decimal places when over 5 places.

* One value in Time column "2023-08-14 02:36:48" was corrected to "2023-08-14 02:36:48.000000" to match format of column. The submitter verified that indeed it should be microseconds .000000 and was a real time that had the trailing zeroes removed during processing workflow.

NSF Award Abstract:
Marine plankton form the base of most ocean food webs that support valuable fisheries. This highly diverse and complex community is composed of organisms that drift with ocean currents. Planktonic organisms remain understudied: they are difficult to sample given that their sizes span more than six orders of magnitude from less than one micron to meters. Yet, understanding how these communities respond to climate change, and ultimately how these responses affect valuable fisheries, and therefore food security, is critical. Because many ecological and physiological processes are dictated by relative size, the theory of size spectra (i.e., the relationship between size and organism abundance as it drives ecosystem properties such as food webs) provides a valuable framework for forecasting climate change impacts on marine ecosystems. A deeper understanding of the scope and nature of variability in size spectra under contrasting environmental conditions is needed. The dynamic, highly productive northern California Current off Oregon and Washington, during the summer and winter seasons, produces a patchwork of oceanographic conditions including those associated with hypoxia and ocean acidification. This study is sampling the plankton communities in this region to investigate how gradients of temperature, nutrients, dissolved oxygen, and pH conditions impact size spectra. The broader impacts include the training of students, building scientific resources, and outreach to broader communities. Undergraduate and graduate students are being trained in oceanography, field research and new technologies. The automated image analysis pipeline developed as part of the project is openly accessible to the oceanographic community and the image data are available through the novel Global Plankton Imagery Library, an open-access repository for plankton imagery. Size spectra data from this study are shared directly with ecosystem modelers. The project’s flagship outreach activity is the collaboration with the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology and the hosting of an Artist-At-Sea Program. A professional artist is competitively selected to join the research cruises and to create artistic products that give a unique voice to oceanographic research and the organisms under study. The artwork is being assembled into a traveling public Art Exhibit with planned displays at the Sitka Center, Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, University of Oregon’s Charleston Marine Life Center and centers located in underserved coastal communities. Finally, imagery data from the project are being shared via the Plankton Portal, a public website developed in partnership with the Citizen Science Alliance’s Zooniverse, that invites citizen scientists to participate in classifying plankton images.

The coupling of in situ plankton imagery and morphometric data allows quantifying scales of variation in plankton size spectra as well as testing predictions of how changes in environmental conditions (notably, temperature, nutrients, oxygen, pH) correlate with shifts in size spectra to reveal functional consequences to the food web. Plankton size spectra are being compared across environmental conditions by sampling in a habitat with steep environmental gradients and during two contrasting seasons. Planktonic organisms spanning 10 orders of magnitude in biomass are sampled using two complementary high-resolution imaging systems: the In Situ Ichthyoplankton Imaging System (ISIIS) and the Laser In-Situ Scattering and Transmissometry (LISST) particle imager. High-throughput image analysis software is used to create size distributions together with taxonomic classification. Depth-discrete meso-zooplankton samples are collected in parallel to examine community shifts in carbon, obtain length-to-carbon conversions and calibrate image data. The normalized biomass size spectra computed from the image data are tested for deviations from expected patterns. The plankton collections are also being analyzed for diet and reproductive status of gelatinous zooplankton, and diet and daily growth rate of representative larval fishes. These two groups have been historically understudied yet play central roles in ecosystem function. The data are being used to examine how these organisms are impacted by environmental conditions, and how they affect plankton size spectra. This study is foundational to the understanding of marine ecosystems within the context of climate change.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.