Macroinvertebrate community structure data for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill sampling in the Gulf of Mexico deep-sea benthos, 2010-2014, and daily sample logs from 2010-09-16 to 2010-10-20

Benthic macroinfauna invertebrate community structure for all samples collected under the National Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) study of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Samples were collected during cruises in 2010, 2011, and 2014, aboard the R/V Gyre, R/V Ocean Veritas, M/V Sarah Bordelon, and M/V Irish (2010-09-16 to 2014-06-28). Sediment samples were collected to a depth of 10 cm and preserved in formalin. Upon return to the lab, macrofauna were extracted from core sections using 300-μm sieves and hand sorted under a dissecting microscope. All organisms were identified to the family level when possible. This dataset also includes documentation for the four cruises and cruise reports from the M/V Sarah Bordelon (2011), M/V Irish (2014), and R/V Ocean Veritas (2010); links to the original Gyre and Ocean Veritas data collected in 2010, served by NCEI (file ‘NODC DWH Ship Files.xlsx’); and the original daily data sheets, which detail (a) all sediment samples collected and (b) results from toxicology and hydrocarbon analyses conducted on board the Ocean Veritas and Gyre cruises. The daily sheets specify samples drawn for all analyses, core length, depth of the supernatant, and sample IDs for a suite of analysis, including sediment properties, visual appearance, bacteria, macrofauna, meiofauna, and hydrocarbons. These sheets are in a common format required by the Subsurface Monitoring Unit in Houma, Louisiana.