NOAA Technical Report NMFS 140 



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Figure 1 

 Chart of the studv area showing the location of stations where quantitative samples of macrobenthic invertebrates were 

 obtained. 



bers, number of samples, latitude, longitude, date of 

 sampling, and type of gear used) and environmental 

 measurements (including water depth in meters, bot- 

 tom type, geographic subarea, temperature range [°C], 

 and percent organic carbon) for each sampling site are 

 contained in Theroux et al. 1 '). 



Sampling stations were located in all sections of the 

 studv area, but somewhat more intensive coverage was 

 given to the offshore continental shelf region than to 

 the inshore bays and sounds or to the deep water re- 

 gion beyond the continental shelf. Table 2 lists the 

 number of samples and occurrence frequency for each 

 parameter grouping. A moderate number of samples, 

 however, were taken in the major bays and estuaries, 

 and in deep water. Ninety-two samples were collected at 

 depths less than 24 m, and 93 samples from depths 

 greater than 500 m. The continental rise was only 

 sparsely sampled bet attse of its great depth and the 

 correspondingly increased time required to obtain 

 samples. Minimum and maximum depths at which 

 samples were taken were 3 and 3,973 m. 



Sampling Gear 



The samples consisted of bottom sediments with the 

 constituent fauna collected with a Smith-Mclntyre spring- 

 loaded grab sampler (Smith and Mclntyre, 1954) illus- 

 trated in Figure 3, or a Campbell grab sampler (Menzies 

 et al., 1963) illustrated in Figure 4. The bottom area 

 sampled by the Smith-Mclntyre sampler was 0. 1 m which 

 had a capacity of approximately 1 5 liters (L) . Area sampled 

 by the Campbell sampler was 0.5b m'-', which had a volume 

 capacity of about 200 I .. The Campbell grab was equipped 

 with a 35-mm camera and electronic flash, housed within 

 the buckets, to obtain photographs of the bottom imme- 

 diately before impact (Emery and Merrill, 1964; Emery et 

 al., 1965; Wigley and Emery, 19(17; Theroux, 1984). 



Sample Processing 



Aboard ship, the material obtained at each sampling 

 site by each sampler was processed and preserved as a 



