Hakai Water Properties Profile Processing and QA/QC Procedure Manual (March 31, 2021)

Procedure manual (version 1.0, March 2021) for processing and quality-controlling vertical ocean profile data, such as temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and light. It describes how CTD instruments from RBR and Seabird are deployed in the field and how their raw data are uploaded and matched with field metadata. It then lists the automated processing steps for each instrument type, which produce a consistent dataset averaged into 1-decibar depth bins. Quality control follows the QARTOD flagging standard, plus custom tests for problems like bottom hits, capped oxygen sensors, and boat shadow on light readings. The data are released in two versions: a provisional dataset with automated flags and a research dataset containing only manually reviewed, good-quality data.