Schütte, Florian; Hans, Anna Christina; Schulz, Marco; Hummels, Rebecca; Assokpa, Olivier; Brandt, Peter; Kiko, Rainer; Körtzinger, Arne; Fiedler, Björn; Fischer, Tim; Rodrigues, Elizandro; Hoving, Henk-Jan T; Hauss, Helena (eds.) (2026): Observational insights into the enhanced biological productivity of the Cape Verde Archipelago [dataset editorial publication]. PANGAEA, https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.980861 (DOI registration in progress)

The Cape Verde Archipelago (CVA) is a hotspot of biological productivity in the oligotrophic central North Atlantic, supporting a highly diverse ecosystem. Twenty years of interdisciplinary observational data reveal the physical processes driving this productivity and their impacts on the composition of biological life across the food web of the CVA. The dataset consists of various interdisciplinary datasets conducted over the past decades during a large number of field campaigns with different objectives. During the cruises, underway horizontal velocity measurements were obtained from a 38 kHz, a 75 kHz or a 350 kHz RDI Ocean Surveyor (OS) vessel mounted Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (vmADCP). The accuracy of the used 1-hr averaged vmADCP data is better than 0.02 – 0.04 m s-1 (J. Fischer et al., 2003). All velocity data were combined to obtain an average picture of the velocity structure in the archipelago.Turbulence dissipation rates were derived from shipboard microstructure measurements which were frequently conducted during three research cruises in the CVA. Hydrographic data were acquired during the research cruises using a Seabird Conductivity, Temperature, Depth (CTD) sonde. After calibration, the data accuracies for a single research cruise are generally assumed to be better than ±0.001 °C for temperature and ±0.004 g kg-1 for salinity. The profiling system used was an MSS90-D profiler, manufactured by Sea & Sun Technology. The loosely-tethered profiler is optimized to sink at a rate of about 0.6 m s-1. During seven cruises in different seasons between 2012 and 2019, mesozooplankton samples were collected from vertically stratified hauls with a Hydrobios Multinet Midi (five nets, 200 µm mesh size).