Pacific Marine Arctic Regional Synthesis (PacMARS) benthic infauna, from Saint Lawrence Island, Alaska to the the East Siberian, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas, Arctic Ocean, 1970-2012

As seasonal sea ice declines in much of the Arctic and reached record minima in 2012, oil and gas exploration are increasing, and additional ship traffic is also using Bering Strait, perhaps a portend of changes to come if the Northern Sea Route along the north coast of Russia becomes a practical ice-free route between Asia and Europe, reducing shipping costs significantly. The Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic has also become ice-free several times in recent summers, a significant change. All of the Arctic countries, including Russia, the United States, Canada, and Denmark (Greenland) are exploring the limits of their arctic continental shelves in order to advance claims under the Law of the Sea Treaty. Within this context of environmental and likely socio-economic changes, wildlife populations and human communities are adjusting to these shifts in seasonal sea ice coverage and climatic warming that has been much more obvious than at lower latitudes. Subsistence hunting patterns in the Arctic are changing, and it is also clear that many organisms, from plankton to top predators may be changing their migration and foraging patterns. Productivity is also forecast to change as sea ice declines and penetration of sunlight into open water increases. The Pacific Marine Arctic Regional Synthesis (*PacMARS*) is a research synthesis effort underwritten by the North Pacific Marine Research Institute to assemble by mid-year 2013 up-to-date written documentation that contributes to understanding the Pacific-influenced coastal shelf ecosystem of the Arctic Ocean. Our study area extends from Saint Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea through Bering Strait into the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas and our objective is to compile the best available knowledge from local communities, peer-reviewed social and natural sciences, as well as less readily available knowledge sources. The overall goal is to provide guidance for scientific research needs in the region, as well as to serve stakeholder needs for understanding this important ecosystem and its vulnerabilities. This dataset contains summary measurements of average benthic macroinfaunal taxa to the family level collected at each station for the identified cruise, with parameters of station, abundance, wet weight biomass (gww/m2), carbon dry weight biomass (gC/m2), number of taxa, Shannon-Wiener diversity and evenness indices, and number of grabs collected/station. For more information, see: https://pacmars.cbl.umces.edu/

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