Quantitative phytoplankton profiles for Pensacola Transect Station P5 collected during the R/V Bellows cruise of DeSoto Canyon, April 6, 2013

This dataset reports phytoplankton species abundance data for samples collected on 2013-04-06 onboard the R/V Bellows BE_1317 cruise in the Gulf of Mexico from 2013-04-06 to 2013-04-08. Samples were taken at Pensacola Transect Station P5 (29.9167 N, 87.25 W) in the Florida Panhandle Bight at the head of DeSoto Canyon. One-liter samples were collected from the surface and at depths of 25 and 48 meters using Niskin bottles. Up to one liter of each sample was filtered onto a 0.45 micrometer nitrocellulose filter and air-dried. A portion of each filter was mounted on an aluminum stub, sputter-coated, and examined with a JEOL JSM-6480 LV scanning electron microscope. Diatoms, coccolithophores, and armored dinoflagellates were identified to the lowest possible taxonomic category. The number of cells of each taxon in a field of view at a magnification of 1000x was recorded, with up to 700 fields-of-view examined, depending on the density of phytoplankton in the sample. The dataset includes the depth, the volume filtered, the number of cells of each taxon counted, and the calculated abundance of each taxon in cells per liter. Micrographs taken during the analysis are included.