Long-term monitoring of oceanographic conditions in Prince William Sound, Alaska: 1973-2010

These historic data sets are from Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth (CTD) surveys conducted by various agencies from the 1970s to 2009. Agencies that collected the data include NOAA's Office of Coast Survey (OCS), NOAA's National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC), University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Marine Science (UAF IMS), Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics (GLOBEC), and more.

These data sets were assembled in order to provide historical context for the current proposed project, "Long-term monitoring of oceanographic conditions in Prince William Sound" (EVOSTC Project 12120114-E). This project is a component of the integrated Long-term Monitoring of Marine Conditions and Injured Resources and Services submitted by McCammon et. al. This project is intended to provide physical and biological measurements that may be used to assess bottom-up impacts on the marine ecosystems of Prince William Sound. Specifically, it is proposed to deploy an autonomous profiling mooring in central Prince William Sound that will provide high frequency (~daily) depth-specific measurements of physical (temperature, salinity, turbidity), biogeochemical (nitrate, phosphate and silicate) and biological (Chlorophyll-a concentration) parameters that will be telemetered out in near real-time. Several regular vessel surveys are also proposed to provide ground-truth data for the mooring, and to attempt to capture some of the spatial variability in PWS. As well as the mooring site, the surveys will visit all four of the SEA bays to maintain ongoing EVOSTC funded time series measurements at those sites and to support proposed herring research (Pegau et. al). The major entrances (Hinchinbrook Entrance and Montague Strait) will also be visited. The surveys will make the same suite of measurements as the mooring, and will also collect water and plankton samples. This project will also link significantly with the herring research efforts proposed by Pegau et al., and will analyze plankton samples collected during intensive studies of juvenile herring feeding and energetics.