Mesocosm: Effect of chemically dispersed crude oil on the grazing of microzooplankton on phytoplankton

The mesocosm study was conducted in May 2017 at the Marine Science Institute of UT Austin in Port Aransas (Texas) aiming to simulate oil spills events in outdoor containers. Whole natural seawater was spiked with 10 µL/L of chemically dispersed Louisiana Sweet crude oil and Corexit 9500A dispersant in outdoor 500L mesocosms to investigate the influence of oil pollutants on the bulk grazing impact of microzooplankton on phytoplankton in natural seawater. This oil pollutant treatment was conducted in triplicate together with triplicate control treatments for comparison. Dilution experiments were conducted to quantify the bulk grazing mortality and population growth of phytoplankton in seawater on the second and sixth days of pollutants exposure. The dataset contains physicochemical data of seawater in mesocosms, biological data of plankton including chlorophyll-a concentration and cell count, and concentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and total petroleum hydrocarbons.