Dataset: Krill abundance by species

Three day trips were made aboard the R/V Thuwal to a location referred to as the Economic City Deep or ECDEEP: a ~700 m deep basin located north of KAUST at 22.5o N, 39.03o E).  A 1/4-m MOCNESS (Multiple Opening/Closing Net and Environmental Sensing System; Wiebe et al., 1985) with 200 µm mesh nets was used to sample the zooplankton.

Field sampling: The MOCNESS was obliquely towed four times from the stern A-frame using 11.43 mm conducting cable to 600 m depth with a ship speed nominally of 2 kts (Fig. 2; Table 1). Two MOCNESS tows were taken during daytime, one each on 7 and 8 January 2014, and two night tows were taken on 12 January 2014. The first day tow (m-25-001) was equipped with 5 nets that sampled 600-400, 400-200, 200-100, and 100-0 m. The second day tow (m-25-002) and the two night tows (m-25-003, m-25-004) each had six nets that sampled 600-400, 400-200, 200-100, 100-50, and 50-0 m. The first tow was done without having GPS data input to the MOCNESS acquisition program, so positions from the bridge were obtained for the tow start and end, and at each opening of a net. GPS positions were logged for the other three tows. The MOCNESS system was equipped with the standard SeaBird temperature and conductivity probes. Volume of water filtered by each net was based on the net frame angle and flowmeter counts using equation 10b in Wiebe et al., 1985.

The samples from the first tow were all preserved in 95% alcohol suitable for genetic analysis. Those from the other three tows were first split in a Folsom splitter (McEwen et al., 1954) and then one half was preserved in alcohol and the other half preserved in formalin. In the KAUST Red Sea Center laboratory, the euphausiids in the alcohol fraction of each of the stratified oblique samples were sorted using a dissecting stereomicroscope, identified using the Baker et al. (1990) guide, and counted.