Bacterial Abundance and Production Measured during the U.S. JGOFS Arabian Sea Process Study

A component of U.S. Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) is the
Arabian Sea Process Study. Eleven cruises took place aboard the R/V
Thomas G. Thompson for about sixteen months from October 1994 until
January 1996. These cruises provided seasonal coverage of the annual
monsoon and inter-monsoon cycles in the area southeast of Oman - from
where the cruises were staged. The monsoons of the Arabian Sea drive
a uniquely intense carbon cycling system, and it is the goal of JGOFS
to better understand the role of the oceans in global carbon cycling.

The CTD rosette bottle sampler was used to collect water samples at
various depths. Water samples were filtered and stained. Bacteria
were counted by epifluorescence microscopy.

The water samples were also incubated with 3H-leucine and 3H-thymidine
to determine leucine and thymidine incorporation. These values can be
used to calculate bacterial production.

The final dataset contains depth profiles of bacterial abundance,
leucine incorporation, and thymidine incorporation for four of the
eleven cruises.

The data is public domain and can be retrieved on-line at
"http://usjgofs.whoi.edu/jg/dir/jgofs/"

[This information was obtained from U.S. JGOFS website at WHOI.]