Sea surface temperature, salinity, and other presence or absence data for epipelagic tows collected during R/V Blazing Seven cruises LF2016A and LF2016B in Gulf of Mexico from 2016-06-09 to 2016-07-28 (NCEI Accession 0235237)

This dataset reports presence or absence data and other environmental cruise data collected in the Gulf of Mexico during R/V Blazing Seven cruises LF2016A and LF2016B from 2016-06-09 to 2016-07-28. Larval fishes in pelagic waters sampled from 48 stations were collected with three different gear types: 1) neuston net (2 m width x 1 m height frame) rigged with 1200 micron mesh; 2) paired 61-cm bongo nets with 333 and 500-micron mesh; 3) paired ring net with 1000 micron mesh. Other cruise data were collected at each site including latitude/longitude, date, time, environmental data (temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen) and Sargassum dry weight. Sea surface temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen were measured at the surface of each station using a Sonde 6920 Environmental Monitoring System (YSI Inc., Yellow Springs, Ohio, United States).