This dataset consists of a quantitative imaging dataset of FlowCam-imaged microplankton (> 20 µm), collected with the Deck Net during the Tara Pacific Expedition (2016-2018). Samples were collected at the surface, generally on a daily frequency, across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from open-ocean stations (142 samples; open-ocean label: [i00_oa###]) and from stations in coastal waters of 32 Pacific islands (62 samples; island label: [i##_oa###]). The full description and discussion of this dataset can be found in the associated data paper Mériguet et al. (in rev).

This dataset consists of  1 581 613 plankton individuals, plankton parts, non-living particles and imaging artefacts, ranging from 20 µm to 200 µm, individually imaged and measured with the FlowCam (Sieracki et al., 1998). The objects were classified into 129 taxonomic and morphological groups. All images and their taxonomic annotations are available in the open-access EcoTaxa (Picheral et al., 2017) project at these links: subset < 500 pixels (30%) https://ecotaxa.obs-vlfr.fr/prj/11353 and subset > 501 pixels (100%) https://ecotaxa.obs-vlfr.fr/prj/11341. The description of the subsets can be found in the associated data paper (Mériguet et al. in rev). The 'Export EcoTaxa FlowCam Tara Pacific DN 20 microns subset 30% < 500 pixels' and 'Export EcoTaxa FlowCam Tara Pacific DN 20 microns subset 100% > 501 pixels' dataset contains the EcoTaxa tsv exports which associate each object with these metadata (station name, sampling coordinates, sampling date and time, etc., the main metadata are found in the Classic Metadata FlowCam Tara Pacific DN 20 microns.csv table) and describe it by numerous morphological features extracted from each individual object by ZooProcess. The csv table named 'Export EcoTaxa FlowCam read me.csv' defines the 202 variables found in the EcoTaxa tsv export. The 'Descriptors FlowCam Tara Pacific DN 20 microns.csv' table combined the data from which we calculated quantitative descriptors of the planktonic communities: abundance (ind.m-3), biovolume (mm3.m-3; as a proxy of biomass) calculated from the area, riddled area and ellipsoidal measurement of each object (see Vandromme et al., 2012 for the 3 calculations of biovolume), and Shannon diversity index. This was done for all taxonomic annotations and for several levels of grouping; living or non-living, plankton groups and trophic association. The individual biovolumes of organisms were arranged in Normalised Biomass Size Spectra (NBSS) as described by Platt (1978), with size expressed as Equivalent Spherical Diameter (ESD, µm). NBSS calculations were made for all taxonomic annotations and for the different levels of grouping. There are available for each station in the NBSS FlowCam Tara Pacific DN 20 microns csv tables.