Coccolithophore species fluxes in the Australian and New Zealand sectors of the Subantarctic Zone

The samples from the Australian SAZ were retrieved at the SOTS observatory, which lies in the SAZ (near 47°S, 142°E), approximately 500 km south west of Tasmania. SOTS was instrumented with three moored platforms: (i) a surface tower buoy that performs meteorological measurements (the Southern Ocean Flux Station - SOFS); (ii) a surface mixed layer mooring equipped with an automated water sampler) and nutrient, carbon and biological measurement sensors (the Pulse mooring); and (iii) a bottom-tethered deep sediment trap mooring that collects sinking particle fluxes for diverse biogeochemical studies (the SAZ mooring).

The samples from New Zealand came from the deep-ocean SAM mooring deployed in Subantarctic waters south east of New Zealand (46°40’S, 178’ 30°E), and was equipped with sediment traps and a suite of sensors. Here, we report the coccolith sinking assemblages captured by sediment traps at ~1000, 2000 and 3800 m depth for a year from August 2011 until July 2012 at the SOTS observatory and a sediment trap at ~1500 m depth for a year from November 2009 until October 2010 at the SAM site.