Abiotic and biotic sediment characteristics for stations from the North-Western Weddell Sea, Bransfield Strait, and Drake Passage (POLARSTERN cruise PS 81, ANT-XXIX/3, January-March 2013)

Around the Antarctic Peninsula (North-Western Weddell Sea, Bransfield Strait, Drake Passage) sediment samples were collected with a MUC6 multicorer. Cores were subsampled for environmental parameters with cut-off 10-ml syringes. Subsamples for determination of grain size, total organic carbon (TOC) and total nitrogen (TN) were stored at −20°C. Samples for pigment analyses were stored at −80°C. Subsamples were sliced in 1-cm slices (0–1 cm, 1–2 cm, 2–3 cm, 3–4 cm, 4–5 cm). Sediment grain sizes were determined with a Malvern Mastersizer 2000 and expressed as relative percentages of the different size fractions. Total organic carbon (TOC) and total nitrogen (TN) were determined from freeze-dried samples by elemental analysis. Prior to combustion samples used for TOC analyses were acidified with 2% HCl in order to remove inorganic carbon. Pigments were extracted with 10 ml acetone (90%) from lyophilised sediment, separated by HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography) and determined with a fluorescence detector: Chlorophyll-a, phaeophytin and phorbide are expressed in µg/g. For details see Hauquier et al. (2015) and Veit-Köhler et al. (2018).