Float park phase data collected at depth in the Sargasso Sea from 2013-2014.

Abstract

Optical proxy measurements of sinking particle flux and water-column bio-optical profiles were obtained from profiling floats in the Sargasso Sea to expand the number of particle flux observations in the critical and under-sampled “twilight zone”. Particulate organic carbon flux derived from float-based optical sediment trap measurements was validated against fluxes measured directly with co-deployed, drifting neutrally-buoyant, sediment traps during a series of five short cruises before floats were deployed for approximately one year. The data returned by the floats comprise quantitative particle flux observations made at high-enough temporal resolution to interpret in the context of short-term, upper-ocean production events. For a complete list of measurements, refer to the supplemental document 'Field_names.pdf', and a full dataset description is included in the supplemental file 'Dataset_description.pdf'. The most current version of this dataset is available at: http://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/728335