| Summary: | The Arctic Ocean ecosystem may respond dramatically to climate change through modification of the physical environment (e.g., hydrography and ice cover). A better understanding of the coupled biological-physical ocean ecosystem, and its interannual variability, is necessary to predict and understand these potential impacts of climate change on the Arctic ecosystem. The Chukchi-Beaufort Sea region near Barrow, Alaska, including coastal waters, has been identified as key because it lies at the junction of several ocean regions and is downstream of the Pacific Arctic gateway and hence is influenced physically and ecologically by input from the northern Bering Sea through Bering Strait. Furthermore, the shelf near Point Barrow is a known feeding hotspot for bowhead whales during their fall migration from the Canadian Arctic to the Bering Sea. To address interannual variability in ocean conditions and the formation of the fall bowhead whale feeding hotspot, oceanographic sampling in the Chukchi and near-shore Beaufort Seas was conducted annually using boat-based surveys during August-September 2005-2015 as part of multiple research programs. This data set contains the mesozooplankton abundances from plankton tows conducted at stations on the Chukchi and Beaufort Shelves and in Barrow Canyon, Alaska, during August and September of 2009. See the file ZooplanktonMethods_2009.txt and the on-line information for a description the sampling and analysis methods. Two data files are included: one in Microsoft Excel (.xls) format and the second in ASCII (.txt) format.
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