The Chukchi Sea Offshore Monitoring in Drilling Area (COMIDA) Chemical and Benthos (CAB) is a comprehensive program funded by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) that is designed to establish an integrated knowledge of this biologically productive and diverse ecosystem.

The CAB component addresses the benthic system with a particular emphasis on sediment chemical characteristics and the benthic biota, both infaunal and epifaunal. Objectives include:

1. To establish baseline data set for benthic infauna and epifauna, organic carbon and sediment grain size, radioisotopes for down core dating, as well as measure trace metals in sediments, biota and suspended particles.

2. To determine the sources, cycles and fate of carbon, selected trace metals and the role of trace metals on organic carbon dynamics and food web dynamics on the inner shelf of the Chukchi Sea.

Data from sampling efforts in 2009 and 2010 reveal that sediments contain low or background values for metals and aliphatic hydrocarbons (except for a few notable exceptions), and that the northern whelk, Neptunea heros, is a potentially valuable indicator for metals and organic contaminants. The northeastern Chukchi Sea is a productive and highly complex system that is characterized by significant spatial heterogeneity in both benthic infaunal and epifaunal populations. This dataset is part of the Pacific Marine Arctic Regional Synthesis (PacMARS) Project.

This dataset includes the original .xls files from each PI, which were converted into .csv files. There is a ZIP file containing the SQL database files that were constructed from the PIs original data. Also included are shapefiles which define the sampling sites and the study area.