Three gear/sampling methods were employed during the STEP-I cruises:
- a standard 1-meter plankton net, towed horizontally,
- a standard 1-meter plankton net, towed obliquely,
- a three-net Clarke-Bumpus, towed horizontally at three depths concurrently. In some stations this was repeated, giving a total of six parallel tows at depth. The target tow duration was 30 minutes.
It is possible that all three methods were used at a single STEP-I sampling station (i.e., providing data from up to 8 "separate" net tows). Within the COPEPOD-2010 architecture, data from these up to 8 different nets were separated into up to 8 station records. The Clarke-Bumpus data (even though towing three nets simultaneously in parallel) was treated as three separate tows (with identical location/date/time info).
|