Mesozooplankton vertical distribution data in Franklin Bay, southern Beaufort Sea, 2003-04

The CASES overwintering station was sampled at weekly intervals from 9 December 2003 to 29 May 2004. Zooplankton were collected with a multi sampler Hydrobios® equipped with nine nets of 200 μm mesh size each that was deployed from the moonpool of the CCG scientific icebreaker Amundsen. The surface first 10 meters of the water column enclosed in the moonpool were not sampled. In addition, samples from integrated Hydrobios tows were collected at the slope stations 703 and 706 in fall 2003, and 709 in summer 2004, respectively. Samples were preserved in a 4% buffered formalin solution in seawater. Zooplankton samples were sieved through 150 µm and 1000 µm sieves. The two size fractions (200-1000 and >1000 µm) were resuspended in water and all the organisms in a known aliquot containing approximately 300 animals were counted and identified to species, and developmental stages for copepods, or to the lowest possible taxonomical level when species identification proved difficult. The data set lists all the taxa identified in the water layers sampled periodically at the overwintering site and at some stations on one shelf-slope transect, their individual counts, volume of water sampled, and station depth, thus permitting the determination of species and developmental stages integrated abundances (ind. m-2) or abundances per unit volume (ind. m-3).