Deep-sea coral and sponge community data from the Gulf of Alaska and Aleutian Islands (North Pacific)

This dataset contains the data used to investigate the diversity, composition, and environmental drivers of deep-sea coral and sponge communities across the Gulf of Alaska and Aleutian Islands. Data were collected during the NOAA Okeanos Explorer expeditions EX2304 and EX2306 using ROV-based video surveys and shipboard environmental sensors. The dataset includes morphotype-level annotations derived from ROV imagery, aggregated at multiple resolutions (individual observations, depth-binned records, and dive-level summaries), along with associated environmental variables including depth, temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, substrate type, and terrain metrics. Reproducible workflowThe full analysis pipeline and scripts are available in an open GitHub repository:🔗 https://github.com/lara-maleen/Okeanos_Alaska This repository contains R scripts and R Markdown documents used to generate figures, compute dissimilarity matrices, and perform statistical analyses reported in the associated manuscript. These data and scripts can be reused for comparative studies of deep-sea biodiversity, habitat characterization, and environmental drivers of benthic communities across the North Pacific margin. Data availability noteRaw CTD and multibeam bathymetry data from the NOAA Okeanos Explorer expeditions EX2304 and EX2306 are not duplicated in this Zenodo archive due to file size constraints. These data are publicly available through NOAA data repositories and the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). The Zenodo archive contains the processed and derived environmental variables used in the analyses presented in the associated manuscript. Guidance on accessing the original raw files can be provided by the authors upon request. Associated manuscriptA preprint of the associated manuscript is available at:🔗 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5317177