Pigment concentration database of the sea surface layer collected during the Tara Pacific Expedition 2016-2018

The Tara Pacific expedition (2016-2018) sampled coral ecosystems around 32 islands in the Pacific Ocean, and sampled the surface of oceanic waters at 249 locations, resulting in the collection of nearly 58,000 samples. The expedition was designed to systematically study corals, fish, plankton, and seawater, and included the collection of samples for advanced biogeochemical, molecular, and imaging analysis. Here we provide a pigment concentrations database originating from 545 stations sampled during the expedition. Pigment were measured by High Performance Liquid Chromatography. This pigment database provides high quality measurements of the major taxonomic pigments including chlorophylls a, b and c, peridinin, 19'-butanoyloxyfucoxanthin, fucoxanthin, neoxanthin, prasinoxanthin, violaxanthin, 19'-hexanoyloxyfucoxanthin, diadinoxanthin, antheraxanthin, alloxanthin, diatoxanthin, zeaxanthin, lutein, divinyl chlorophyll b, chlorophyll b, divinyl chlorophyll a, chlorophyll a, carotene and bacteriochlorophyll a, which can be used to estimate phytoplankton community composition.