SalishCruiseDataPackage_v2025: An updated compiled data package of sensor profile and discrete physical and biogeochemical measurements from 61 individual cruise data sets collected from a variety of ships in the southern Salish Sea and northern California Current System (Washington state marine waters) from 2008-02-04 to 2024-10-22 (NCEI Accession 0307188)

by Simone R. Alin¹, Jan Newton², Christopher Ikeda³, Anna Boyar², Dana Greeley¹, Julian Herndon³, Beth Curry², Alex Kozyr⁴ and Richard A. Feely¹

¹Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Seattle, Washington, USA
²Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
³Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
⁴National Centers for Environmental Information, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA

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Figure 1 Caption

Map of study area, with regions coded using different symbols and cruise station numbers included. “Puget Sound” cruises cover these areas of the southern Salish Sea: Admiralty Reach (red squares), Hood Canal (blue circles), Whidbey Basin (purple diamonds), and Main Basin and South Sound (green triangles, with South Sound stations being 34–38). “Sound-to-Sea” cruises occupied some or all of the stations along the red line (white circles). In some publications, these station numbers are given with a preceding “P”—the station numbers are identical, however (see the NANOOS Salish Cruise app Map tab for full station name information: http://nvs.nanoos.org/CruiseSalish).

Abstract

Acidification patterns in coastal and estuarine environments are challenging to characterize and attribute using moored time-series alone because lateral, depth, seasonal, and interannual variability is complex and has multiple drivers, including circulation, biology, regional weather, and large-scale climate oscillations. Cruise time-series can provide spatial context to data sets with higher temporal resolution, provide invaluable validation for numerical simulations, and frame biological experiments and observations with information about relevant environmental complexity. This time-series of 61 cruise data sets includes observations of physical and biogeochemical oceanographic conditions throughout the southern Salish Sea and into Washington’s northern coastal waters spanning the years 2008–2024, with sampling depths from the seawater surface to near-bottom water masses (Table 1). Figure 1 shows the two predominant sampling patterns used across the cruises: 1) Puget Sound cruises sampled all basins within the sound and across the glacial sill at its inlet (Admiralty Reach). These cruises have recurred seasonally in April, July, and September since 2014, with the exception of April 2014 and April 2020. 2) “Sound-to-Sea” cruises, associated with servicing the Ćháʔba· ocean acidification mooring off La Push, Washington, sample at a suite of CTD stations located between Seattle (located just east of where the Main Basin line ends on the map) and the mooring site off the coast, occurring most frequently in May and October since 2011 when the mooring was first deployed. A subset of stations (7, 22, and 28) belong to both Puget Sound and Sound-to-Sea cruises. Biological sample collection has also been conducted regularly since 2014 at a subset of stations (in the Salish Sea: 4, 8, 12, 22, 28, 38, 402, and on the coast at station 381), although biological data are not included in the data package described here. Observations included in the Salish cruise data product are bottle sample analyses of total alkalinity (TA), dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), nutrient (nitrate, nitrite, ammonium, phosphate, silicate), and oxygen content (µmol per kg units); and CTD sensor measurements of temperature, salinity (via conductivity), and oxygen content at bottle sample depths where Niskin bottles collected seawater. Oxygen and nutrient data are also provided in concentration units (mg per L) to facilitate data applications by biology end users, and oxygen data are provided in mL per L units as well. This updated data package includes 1238 oceanographic profiles, with sample depths of 13,200 sensor measurements of temperature, salinity, and oxygen; and 10,548 oxygen, 9,417 nutrient, 7091 DIC, and 7342 TA discrete sample measurements. Excluding the one very deep cast, the observations in this cruise compilation span wide dynamic ranges of physical (temperature = 6.0–23.3°C, salinity = 15.6–34.0) and biogeochemical conditions (oxygen = 9–612 μmol kg−1, DIC = 1074–2362 μmol kg−1, total alkalinity = 1145–2296 μmol kg−1). Beyond the addition of 26 new cruise data sets, the SalishCruiseDataPackage_v2025 contains many updated quality flags from the original 2008–2018 version of the data package, based on additional scrutiny of property-property plots, station profiles, an improved understanding of the extreme events captured by this time-series (Figure 2). These changes, along with changes in the oxygen flagging conventions, are detailed in the metadata. The Salish cruise time series facilitated the characterization of the seasonality of physical and biogeochemical conditions, the long-lasting effects of the Northeast Pacific marine heatwave of 2013–2015 and the El Niño of 2015–2016 on seawater temperature and carbon, oxygen, and nutrient concentration anomalies, and a novel high-CO2 event in the southern Salish Sea (Alin et al. 2024a,b). Preliminary results from the added 2019–2024 Puget Sound cruises can be found in Alin et al. (2025). This time-series of cruises in Washington’s estuarine and coastal waters is known collectively as “the Salish cruises,” and users can find details on methods used to generate the time series in these publications as well as the metadata through links provided below. Full-resolution data (0.5 dbar depth bins) from CTD downcasts corresponding to the CTD upcast data collected with discrete bottle samples for these Salish cruises, additional parameters including chlorophyll, and CTD profiles and discrete oxygen and nutrient observations dating back to 1998 are also at http://nvs.nanoos.org/CruiseSalish.

Figure 2 Caption

Updated property-property plots used in Alin et al. (2024a, Figures 2–3), colored by quality flags. Preparation of these plots and quality control procedures followed Jiang et al. (2021) recommendations used in developing the Coastal Ocean Data Analysis Product in North America (CODAP-NA). Numerous nutrient quality flags that had been assigned as “questionable” (QF=3) in the original data package have been re-assigned QF values of 2 (“acceptable”) on the basis of their association with extreme events described in Alin et al. (2024b); these analytical results are believed to be sound and reflective of extreme oceanographic conditions. Procedures followed Jiang et al. (2021, https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/13/2777/2021/essd-13-2777-2021.html