Ocean bottom seismometer data in the Cayman Trough, Caribbean Sea, acquired during FS Meteor expedition M115 (2015)

This 2015 FS Meteor survey collected ocean bottom seismograph data in the Cayman Trough, Caribbean Sea, as part of a joint US-German-UK project. The goal was to investigate the seismic structure of the Mid-Cayman Spreading Center to determine the extent to which magmatism contributes to crustal structure of an ultra-slow oceanic rift segment. The two main ideas to be addressed were (1) Whether the MCSC hosts oceanic core complexes of exhumed crustal or mantle materials, and (2) Whether crustal thickness variations in the MCSC reflect inhibition of magmatism as the spreading-segment ends are approached. Funding for this project was obtained from the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant OCE-1356895 to UT Austin, from the German Research Foundation (DFG), and from the British Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under grant NE/K011162/1 to Durham University. The wide-angle seismic data were recorded with instruments from UTIG and GEOMAR, as well as NERC's Ocean-Bottom Instrumentation Facility [Minshull et al., 2005]. The seismic data used in this study will be made available at the Academic Seismic Portal at UTIG (www-udc.ig. utexas.edu/sdc), the World Data Center PANGAEA (www.pangaea.de), and the British Oceanographic Data Centre (www.bodc.ac.uk).