Data Access

If you will be using SPOT data for a publication, report or presentation, please contact and acknowledge the USC Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability.

Please do not repost data on to another website, publish data without proper citation, or otherwise suggest that you generated the data.

Disclaimer: It is the responsibility of the user to determine the accuracy and completeness of data obtained from the WIES SPOT Data Portal. WIES nor any of its members or employees cannot guarantee the reliability or accuracy of these data.

The SPOT Program utilizes a combination of oceanographic field equipment and laboratory procedures for the accurate and precise measurement of important hydrographic parameters. The first samples were collected in April of 1998, and sampling continues to takes place approximately every month on board the RV Yellowfin (operated by the Southern California Marine Institute and its partners).

Real-time, continuous in situ data

The oceanographic field instruments include a Sea-Bird Electronic (SBE) 911plus CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth), SBE-43 Oxygen sensors, WETLabs fluorometer, and Licor light meter.  The sensors are equipped on a metal frame or rosette and are lowered down the water column to collect real-time in situ data of:  dissolved oxygen, in vivo fluorescence, temperature, salinity, pressure, and the photosynthetically active region (PAR) of light.  Profiles of each measurement are viewed in real-time during each cast onboard the research vessel.

Data from discrete depths

Also attached to the rosette are twelve high-grade cylindrical Niskin collection bottles that each hold 12-l of seawater.  The Niskins stand upright on the rosette and travel down the water column with both ends of the cylinder open so that the cylinders are flushed with seawater in the process.  The caps at both ends of each Niskin can be triggered to close at desired depths from onboard the ship.  For each SPOT cruise, seawater samples are collected at twelve discrete water column depths (m): 2, 10, 20, depth of the chlorophyll maximum (varies), 30, 40, 50, 60, 100, 150, 500, 890 for laboratory analysis of the following parameters:  nutrients (nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, silicate), dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll-a, salinity.  Note:  sample collection depths vary for some years.

Data access

You can access raw and processed CTD data by going to this folder: CTD Data

See below for SPOT Data Portal.

The data portal includes all available CTD data from SPOT cruises between Sept 2000 and Feb 2019 for depths 0-m (surface) down to ~890-m (bottom).  The portal will be updated shortly to include CTD data from Mar 2019 – present.  Data from discrete water samples collected from 12 depths during the same time period will also be added soon.

Click here to watch the SPOT data portal tutorial (VIDEO) or download a written tutorial (PDF)

RAW data files include unprocessed data files that are produced by Seasave v7, the Sea Bird Electronics data acquisition software for CTDs.  These files are available for users who wish to process the data themselves.  Please note that there are four files produced for each CTD cast:

.con – configuration file, containing instrument configuration and calibrations used by the software

.dat – raw 24 Hz data file, binary

.hdr – header file, lat, long, time, etc.

.mrk or .btl – contains bottle data

PROCESSED data is also provided (please see CTD Methods for our data processing protocol) and includes three files per cast:

.asc –processed CTD data (this is a text file that can be opened by any text reader or Excel, tab delimited file)

.hdr –header information, including all CTD parameters and units (text file)

.btl – contains CTD data associated with depths that bottles are fired (text file)

You can access raw and processed CTD data by going to this folder: CTD Data.  There is a ‘README’ file associated with every year and project that lists all successful and attempted cruise dates.

Naming convention of files

dYYMMDDx

d = downcast (note: only for processed files; i.e., raw files will not have this letter denotation)
YY = year
MM = month
DD = day
x = cast number (letters beginning with A)

Example:  September 18, 2000 Cast #1 (data collected during downcast) = d000918A

To access cruise logs from 1998–2013, please email spot-research@usc.edu.